Managing Bitbucket PR Reviews

Overview

Manage Bitbucket pull request review workflows, including default reviewers, merge checks, branch permissions, and CI/CD integration for gated merges.

Key Capabilities

• Configure default reviewers per repository or branch pattern
• Set up merge checks requiring approvals and successful builds
• Manage branch permissions and merge restrictions
• Configure merge strategies (merge commit, squash, fast-forward)
• Set up build status requirements for merge eligibility
• Enforce review policies across Bitbucket workspaces

Workflow

1 — Default Reviewers

DEFAULT REVIEWERS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Repository-level default reviewers:
    - @backend-team (for src/**)
    - @frontend-team (for ui/**)
    - @devops-team (for pipelines/**)
[ ] Branch pattern reviewers:
    Pattern: main <- feature/*
    Reviewers: @senior-engineers
    Required approvals: 2
[ ] Branch pattern reviewers:
    Pattern: release/* <- *
    Reviewers: @release-managers
    Required approvals: 1

2 — Merge Checks

MERGE CHECKS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ] Minimum approvals: ___
[ ] No open tasks: YES / NO
[ ] Minimum successful builds: ___
[ ] All builds must pass: YES / NO
[ ] Merge strategy: merge / squash / fast-forward
[ ] Close source branch on merge: YES / NO
[ ] Require passing builds before merge: YES / NO

3 — Branch Permissions

BRANCH PERMISSIONS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Branch: main
[ ] Prevent direct pushes (require PR): YES / NO
[ ] Prevent deletions: YES / NO
[ ] Prevent rewriting history: YES / NO
[ ] Write access restricted to: ___
[ ] Merge access restricted to: ___

Common Operations

List PRs Awaiting Review

Query open pull requests pending reviewer action across repositories.

Audit Merge Compliance

Verify that merged PRs met minimum approval and build requirements.

Reviewer Workload

Analyze reviewer assignment distribution and review turnaround times.

Troubleshooting

Issue	Cause	Fix
Default reviewers not assigned	Pattern mismatch	Check source/destination branch patterns
Merge button disabled	Merge checks not met	Verify approvals, builds, and task completion
Build status not showing	Pipeline not reporting	Ensure CI/CD reports build status to Bitbucket
Branch permissions ignored	Admin override	Admins can bypass; restrict admin merge access

Output Format

Present results as a structured report:

Managing Bitbucket Pr Reviews Report
════════════════════════════════════
Resources discovered: [count]

Resource       Status    Key Metric    Issues
──────────────────────────────────────────────
[name]         [ok/warn] [value]       [findings]

Summary: [total] resources | [ok] healthy | [warn] warnings | [crit] critical
Action Items: [list of prioritized findings]

Target ≤50 lines of output. Use tables for multi-resource comparisons.

Anti-Hallucination Rules

1. NEVER assume resource names — always discover via CLI/API in Phase 1 before referencing in Phase 2.
2. NEVER fabricate metric names or dimensions — verify against the service documentation or --help output.
3. NEVER mix CLI commands between service versions — confirm which version/API you are targeting.
4. ALWAYS use the discovery → verify → analyze chain — every resource referenced must have been discovered first.
5. ALWAYS handle empty results gracefully — an empty response is valid data, not an error to retry.

Counter-Rationalizations

Shortcut	Counter	Why
"I'll skip discovery and check known resources"	Always run Phase 1 discovery first	Resource names change, new resources appear — assumed names cause errors
"The user only asked for a quick check"	Follow the full discovery → analysis flow	Quick checks miss critical issues; structured analysis catches silent failures
"Default configuration is probably fine"	Audit configuration explicitly	Defaults often leave logging, security, and optimization features disabled
"Metrics aren't needed for this"	Always check relevant metrics when available	API/CLI responses show current state; metrics reveal trends and intermittent issues
"I don't have access to that"	Try the command and report the actual error	Assumed permission failures prevent useful investigation; actual errors are informative