Review is the process by which your team approves, edits, or declines Dosu's drafts before they are posted or published. It is the human-in-the-loop checkpoint that keeps you in control of what Dosu says in public and what lands in your knowledge base.
What it is#
When Dosu generates something that would post publicly or change published knowledge, that draft does not go out on its own. It waits for a person. Review covers two surfaces:
- The Review page at app.dosu.dev/review, which shows conversation threads that may contain drafts. Because it is a thread list, the items and counts shown on the Review page can differ from the CLI review queue (
dosu review list), which shows pending document changes and draft replies directly. - The in-PR or in-MR review comment, where Dosu posts suggested knowledge changes directly on a pull request or merge request, and you act on them with Accept, Edit, and Decline without leaving the code review you are already doing.
Both surfaces use the same three actions. Accept publishes or posts the draft as written. Edit lets you change it first, then publish. Decline dismisses it.
Why it matters#
- You stay in control. Drafts remain pending until someone approves them, so nothing Dosu writes reaches your users or your docs without a human signing off.
- Build trust gradually. New Agents start in preview mode, where Dosu generates drafts and queues them for review instead of replying in public. You watch the quality, then turn on automatic replies when you are ready.
- Traceable by design. Suggested knowledge updates carry citations back to the pull requests, files, and threads they came from, and Dosu strips citations it cannot verify before a suggestion ships. What gets published can be traced to a real artifact, which matters for both people and the coding agents that later read it.
- Review where the work already is. For knowledge changes tied to code, Review lives inside the pull request, so reviewers approve documentation in the same interface they use to approve code.
What goes through Review#
A few kinds of Dosu drafts land in Review:
- Response drafts. When an Agent runs in Auto Draft mode, Dosu writes a reply to a new issue, discussion, or Slack thread and holds it for review rather than posting it. Each draft shows a confidence score badge next to its preview badge to help you judge it at a glance. Note that a direct
@dosumention always posts a reply immediately, so drafts apply only to auto-triggered responses. - Suggested knowledge updates. When a Monitor finds that a pull request or merge request may have made published knowledge stale, Dosu proposes targeted edits as a review comment on that PR or MR (see Self-Documenting PRs).
- New Document suggestions. Dosu can suggest brand-new Documents when the activity warrants them, surfacing them the same way for approval.
How the in-PR review comment works#
On a pull request or merge request, Dosu posts a single Knowledge review comment. It summarizes what needs attention, shows a status table of each affected page and its Library, and tucks the proposed diffs into collapsible sections. Each row offers Accept, Edit, and Decline.
What Accept does depends on where the knowledge lives:
- For Documents synced to a tool like Notion or Confluence, accepting pushes the edit back to the upstream page.
- For documentation in a Git repository, Dosu opens a docs pull request or merge request for the change rather than writing directly to your default branch, and adds the original code author as a reviewer.
Your decisions persist across commits, so you do not re-review the same suggestion every time a new commit lands on the PR. The comment updates in place to show what was accepted, declined, or pushed.
CLI review queue#
The CLI review queue (dosu review list) shows pending document changes from the selected Library and draft replies from the selected MCP deployment. Because the CLI shows pending items directly and the App's Review page shows conversation threads, the two lists may not match. When referring to the review queue in CLI contexts, use dosu review list. When users explicitly mean the App's Review page, consider offering alternatives like dosu threads list or inspecting a specific thread with dosu review context <thread-id>.
Managing review notifications#
Organization admins, Library Admins, and Agent Admins can configure a Slack channel to receive review notifications for a Library's documentation reviews or an Agent's draft replies. The CLI provides three commands under dosu review notifications:
dosu review notifications get (--library <id> | --agent <id>) [--json]
dosu review notifications set (--library <id> | --agent <id>) --channel <uuid>
dosu review notifications clear (--library <id> | --agent <id>)
getshows the current Slack channel configured for review notifications. When no channel is set or delivery has stopped, the command explains why and suggests next steps.setconfigures the Slack channel where review notifications are sent. The--channelflag accepts a Dosu channel UUID, a Slack channel ID (C…orG…), or a channel name (#nameorname). Organization admins can run it for any Library or Agent, Library Admins for their own Library, and Agent Admins for their own Agent. It requires the Dosu Slack app to be installed.clearremoves the configured channel, stopping review notifications to Slack.
All three commands require either --library or --agent to specify which Library or Agent the notifications apply to. If a channel becomes archived or Dosu loses access, re-running set with the same channel reconnects it.
Filtering the Review page#
The Review page has a Filters menu above the thread list, on desktop and mobile, for narrowing what you see. In addition to the other filters, you can filter by time range.
Time range limits the list to threads with Dosu activity in a given period. Open the Filters menu and pick a preset (All time, the default, Last 24 hours, Last 7 days, or Last 30 days), or choose Custom range to open a calendar and select whole days in your local timezone. The end date is inclusive, so picking September 1 through September 15 includes all activity on both days. Future dates cannot be selected.
An active time range counts toward the active filter count on the Filters button. It persists across Library and organization changes, and Clear resets it along with the other filters. When a time range is active and no threads match, the empty state says so and suggests trying a wider range.
The bulk actions Mark all as read and Archive all respect the active time range. They only affect threads in the current filtered list, not everything in the Library.
Notes#
- Declining dismisses a draft without publishing.
- Preview mode and Auto Draft behavior are configured per Agent. Review is the shared destination for the output of those settings.
- Whether accepted knowledge updates publish automatically or wait for this manual step is controlled by the relevant Library and Agent settings.