Code review glossary
Short definitions of the terms that decide whether a code review works: rubber-stamping, automation complacency, escaped defects, review recall and review precision.
- Rubber-stamping: Rubber-stamping is approving a pull request without reading it closely enough to find a defect, so the approval records that a review step happened rather than that the code was checked.
- Automation complacency: Automation complacency is the drop in attention people pay to a task once an automated aid usually gets it right, so the aid's misses go unnoticed; in code review it is skimming a pull request because CI or an AI reviewer has already passed it.
- Escaped defect: An escaped defect is a bug that passes every check before release (review, tests, staging) and is found in production, by monitoring, support tickets or customers.
- Review recall: Review recall is the share of real defects in a change that a review catches: caught defects divided by all defects present.
- Review precision: Review precision is the share of a reviewer's comments that point at real problems, as opposed to false alarms, nitpicks presented as defects, or requests to change correct code.