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LGTM, PTAL, nit: code review terms and what they mean

By Ilya Volodarsky · Updated

Code review has its own shorthand. LGTM means "looks good to me": it is what a reviewer says when approving a change.[1] PTAL asks someone to take a look, and a comment that starts with "Nit:" is a minor point the author may skip.[2]

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The terms that matter most say whether a comment blocks the merge. GitHub records each review as Approve, Request changes or Comment,[3] and IonWarp labels every finding P0, P1 or P2, so the author can tell what has to change before merging and what can wait.

The terms

  • LGTM

    Looks good to me: the reviewer approves the change.[1] "LGTM with comments" approves it while leaving small points the author fixes before merging.[4]

  • PTAL

    Please take a look. An author sends it to ask for a review, and again after pushing fixes, when it means "please take another look".

  • SGTM

    Sounds good to me. Agreement with a plan or an answer in the thread, not an approval of the code.

  • Nit

    Short for nitpick: a minor point. Google's review guide labels such comments "Nit:", something worth doing that will not hugely matter, so the author knows it is optional.[2]

  • WIP and RFC

    Work in progress: not ready for review yet. Request for comments: the author wants feedback on the approach before polishing the code.

  • ACK and NACK

    Acknowledged and not acknowledged: agreement with a change, or an objection to it, as written on mailing-list projects.

  • Approve, Request changes, Comment

    GitHub's three review decisions. Approve says the change is ready to merge, Request changes flags feedback to address before merging, and Comment leaves feedback without either.[3]

  • Blocking and non-blocking

    Whether a comment must be resolved before the change is accepted. Conventional Comments adds a (blocking) or (non-blocking) tag to the comment.[5]

  • Stacked pull request

    One of a chain of small pull requests, each based on the branch of the one below, so each can be reviewed and merged on its own. GitHub supports them in public preview.[6]

  • Rubber stamp

    An approval given without really reading the change. A one-minute LGTM on a 2,000-line diff is usually one.

How IonWarp marks what blocks and what is a nit

  1. P0: stop the line

    Merging it would likely cause an outage, data loss, a security breach or lost money. By default a P0 sets IonWarp's GitHub check to Action required.

  2. P1: block this merge

    A real defect the change introduces, on a path a user or operator hits: a wrong result, a crash, a security weakness or a broken deploy.

  3. P2: real, fix it later

    An edge case, low impact, duplication or a docs gap. IonWarp's comment counts open P2s as nitpicks.

  4. Your settings decide what fails the check

    By default a P1 leaves the check neutral and a P2 passes it. You can change the result for each level in settings.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Sources

  1. Google Engineering Practices: Terminology — Google, read 2026-10-04.
  2. How to write code review comments — Google, read 2026-10-04.
  3. Pull request reviews — GitHub Docs, read 2026-10-04.
  4. Speed of Code Reviews — Google, read 2026-10-04.
  5. Conventional Comments — Conventional Comments, read 2026-10-04.
  6. About stacked pull requests — GitHub Docs, read 2026-10-04.

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