The Ultimate Code Review Checklist for Modern Development Teams
What makes a "good" code review? If you focus on the wrong things, you're just wasting time. If you miss the right things, you're shipping bugs.
Use this checklist to standardize your team's review process and ensure nothing critical slips through.
1. Logic & Functionality
- ▹ Does the code actually do what the requirements say?
- ▹ Are there any obvious "happy path" bugs?
- ▹ Are edge cases (null inputs, empty arrays, timeouts) handled?
- ▹ Is there any dead code or redundant logic?
2. Security
- ▹ Is user input sanitized? (XSS, SQL Injection)
- ▹ Are there any hardcoded secrets, keys, or tokens?
- ▹ Does this change expose any sensitive PII (Personally Identifiable Information)?
- ▹ Are authorization checks performed at the correct level?
3. Architecture & Design
- ▹ Does this follow the project's established patterns (e.g., Clean Architecture, SOLID)?
- ▹ Is the code in the right place? (Proper folder structure/layering)
- ▹ Does this introduce unnecessary coupling between services?
- ▹ Is the solution over-engineered for the current requirement?
4. Performance
- ▹ Are there any N+1 query problems?
- ▹ Are we doing heavy computation inside loops?
- ▹ Does this change significantly increase the bundle size?
- ▹ Are expensive operations memoized or cached appropriately?
5. Observability & Maintainability
- ▹ Are meaningful logs included for critical paths?
- ▹ Are error messages helpful (to both devs and users)?
- ▹ Are variable and function names descriptive and accurate?
- ▹ Is the code self-documenting, or are comments needed for "why"?
6. Testing
- ▹ Are there new tests for the new functionality?
- ▹ Do existing tests still pass?
- ▹ Are the tests actually asserting behavior, or just "calling the function"?
- ▹ Are integration tests included for cross-service changes?
Automating the Checklist
Going through this manually for every PR is exhausting. That's why we built Mesrai.
Mesrai uses AST-level analysis to automatically check for architectural violations, security holes, and performance bottlenecks before a human even opens the PR.