Review notes are local comments pinned to a range of diff lines. They exist for one purpose: turning “here’s what’s wrong with this diff” into a message an AI coding agent can act on — without you retyping the file paths and line numbers.
Writing a note
Drag across the lines you want in any diff — the commit review, the stacked review, or the working-changes inspector — and write your comment. A note can cover a single line or a contiguous range, and it captures the selected source alongside your text.
Notes anchor to a side and line reference rather than a raw offset:
R20 for a line on the new side, L4 on the old side, and R18–R20 for a
range. That’s why a note survives a diff refresh — the reference stays
meaningful even if the diff re-flows.
Deletions belong to the old side; additions and context lines to the new side, matching how the diff body numbers each rendered line.
Handing off
Once you have a note or two, the docked Hand to agent bar opens the handoff dialog. It shows:
- Every pending comment, each removable — including any whose lines disappeared after a refresh, which have no other UI to reach them
- A composed message, ordered by file, then line, then side, so it reads in a stable order rather than the order you happened to write the notes
- An agent picker, listing the agents you enabled in Settings
The composed message is fully editable. Once you type in it, GitLane stops regenerating it — removing a note from the list won’t clobber what you wrote.
Then either:
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Copy | The message goes to your clipboard |
| Send | The message is typed into the integrated terminal, launching the selected agent |
Only comments from the surface that opened the dialog are handed off, so reviewing one commit doesn’t sweep in notes you left on another.
The message format
Each note becomes a numbered block naming the file, the line or range, and your feedback:
1. src/store/repo.ts — lines R18–R20
Feedback: this refetches on every keystroke — debounce it
2. src/lib/api/git.ts — line R44
Feedback: swallowing the error here hides a real failurePlain text, deliberately. It’s readable to you before you send it, and unambiguous to an agent after.
Agents
The picker lists agents from Settings → Terminal Agents, greying out any
whose command isn’t on your PATH. If you haven’t enabled any, the dialog
says so and Copy still works.