Reviewing Pull Requests

Grove makes PR review faster by giving you a fully isolated environment for the branch — separate from your current work, with its own stack and ports.

The workflow

1. Check out the PR

grove start 847

Grove uses gh pr view 847 --json headRefName to resolve the branch name, fetches it, and creates a worktree:

Resolving PR #847…
  → branch: feat/auth-refresh
Creating worktree at ~/repos/my-app-worktrees/feat-auth-refresh…
Generating .env.worktree from grove config…
  COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=my-app-feat-auth-refresh
  WEB_PORT=8082
  DB_PORT=5434
Resolving environment provider…
  → provider: docker-compose
Starting environment…
  web: http://localhost:8082
✓ Ready: feat/auth-refresh

Your current worktree and its stack keep running untouched.

2. Open in your editor

grove open feat/auth-refresh

Grove opens the worktree path in your editor — VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, or whatever is configured.

3. Browse the running app

The PR's environment is available at the URL from grove start:

grove status feat/auth-refresh --json

{
  "ok": true,
  "web": "http://localhost:8082",
  "api": null,
  "source": "grove",
  "mode": "docker-compose"
}

Visit http://localhost:8082 to interact with the PR's version of the app. It has its own database schema — no data from your main environment leaks in.

4. Run tests

# From inside the PR worktree
cd ~/repos/my-app-worktrees/feat-auth-refresh
npm test

Or use your editor's integrated test runner — it's already opened in the right directory.

5. Clean up

grove delete feat/auth-refresh

Grove prompts for confirmation, brings down the Docker stack, and removes the worktree directory.

To also delete the local branch:

grove delete feat/auth-refresh --delete-branch --yes

Reviewing multiple PRs

You can have several PR worktrees running simultaneously — each gets unique ports, so there's no conflict:

grove start 847   # feat/auth-refresh → :8081
grove start 891   # fix/validation → :8082
grove start 923   # feat/dashboard → :8083

grove status      # see all three at once

Switch between them with grove open <branch> or by navigating the TUI.

Requirements

PR checkout via grove start <PR#> requires the gh CLI:

gh --version   # must be installed and authenticated

If gh is not available, check out the branch manually:

git fetch origin feat/auth-refresh
grove start feat/auth-refresh   # attaches to the existing fetch