What I Look For When a Risky PR Lands

Short summary

Risk in code reviews comes from blast radius and code sensitivity, not line count. A tiny Stripe change touching payments deserves more scrutiny than a large refactor. The author built Merge Lantern, a risk-intelligence platform that surfaces high-risk PRs daily, helping senior engineers allocate their scarce attention to where the real danger actually lives.

• •Risk stems from blast radius and code sensitivity (payments, migrations, dependencies), not size
• •A 265-line billing change poses more risk than a 1,720-line refactor if it touches money logic
• •Merge Lantern surfaces high-risk PRs first so senior attention focuses on actual danger

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.