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Consider publishing specs and plans as pull requests instead of issue uploads #180

Description

@rochecompaan

Summary

Consider publishing specs and plans as pull requests instead of uploading them
to the issue, so reviewers can view planning artifacts as part of a PR and
hold discussion there.

Problems with the current mechanism

Specs and plans are published to the issue with patchmill set-spec and
patchmill set-plan, which attach them to the issue as comments/attachments.

  • Clumsy to view: artifacts appear inline in issue comment bodies. Long
    documents buried in a comment thread are hard to navigate, and each revision
    adds another comment rather than updating a single current view.
  • No checkout: the artifacts are not on a branch. A reviewer cannot check
    them out locally, open them in an editor, or run tooling against them.
  • No real review: issue comments do not support line-level review
    comments, suggestions, or diff views between revisions. Feedback on a
    specific section means quoting it in a new comment.
  • No review state: there is no approval mechanism comparable to PR
    reviews; approval is tracked indirectly through labels.

What a PR would give us

  • The spec and plan live as files on a branch, viewable in the PR files view
    with full Markdown rendering.
  • Line-level review comments and threaded discussion on the exact passage
    under debate.
  • Reviewers can check out the branch locally.
  • Revision history through commits; changes between rounds are visible as
    diffs.
  • Native approval state via PR reviews, which could replace or complement the
    current label-based approval.

Questions to explore

Delivery overview

This issue is the design and coordination umbrella. Implementation is split into independently reviewable sub-issues with explicit dependencies. The umbrella is marked agent-unsuitable; agents should claim only an unblocked child issue.

Dependency order

#184 is the first delivery slice. After it closes, #185, #186, and #187 can proceed in parallel. They converge on #188, followed by #189 and #190.

GitHub native sub-issue and blocked-by relationships are authoritative. The blocked labels mirror those dependencies for Patchmill triage.

Acceptance criteria

  • A decision, with trade-offs recorded, on whether planning artifacts move to
    PRs.
  • If adopted: a design for the planning-PR workflow covering the questions
    above.

Activity

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