When considering the adoption of any new tool or workflow, it’s important to look beyond the surface and understand the potential it may offer your teams. In this guide, we'll explore why your team should consider embracing Graphite and the stacked PR workflow.
What is Graphite?
Graphite is a developer tool designed to accelerate and enhance the code review process. Among other capabilities, it enables teams to use stacked pull requests (PRs), a workflow where changes are split into smaller, logically connected units. Stacked PRs make it easier to review, test, and merge incremental changes, which reduces complexity and improves productivity. With Graphite, teams can maintain cleaner commit histories and accelerate their development cycles while ensuring high code quality.
Here are some key benefits of using Graphite and its powerful AI-driven features:
1. Enhanced code review efficiency
Stacking enables developers to break down changes into smaller, logical units, making each pull request more focused and manageable. This approach minimizes cognitive load during reviews, reduces the risk of errors, and fosters a culture of high-quality, maintainable code. Diamond, Graphite's AI code review tool, further enhances efficiency by providing immediate, actionable feedback on PRs, identifying bugs and performance issues early.
2. Increased productivity
With stacked PRs, developers can work on subsequent tasks while earlier changes are still under review. Graphite's AI-driven insights mean faster identification and resolution of common issues, allowing teams to keep coding continuously without downtime. Diamond's real-time feedback loop accelerates the entire review process, helping developers iterate on their code more quickly and merge PRs faster.
3. Simplified conflict resolution
Smaller, incremental changes inherently reduce the likelihood of conflicts, and when conflicts do occur, they are more straightforward to resolve. This means less time spent untangling complex merges and more time dedicated to building new features. Stacked diffs provide developers with the clarity and control needed to handle conflicts efficiently, leading to a smoother development process. Plus, Diamond provides clarity and context-aware feedback, making merges more straightforward and less time-consuming.
4. Better traceability and accountability
Stacked PRs create a clear, detailed record of each incremental change, making it easy to trace the origin and intent behind every modification. This transparency not only creates accountability within the team but also simplifies debugging and knowledge sharing. Teams can maintain a strong audit trail while fostering trust and alignment in their workflows. Diamond's detailed AI analysis further enriches these insights, helping developers understand the broader impact of changes within the codebase.
5. Full utilization of modern tools
Designed specifically to manage stacked diffs, Graphite simplifies workflows, automates repetitive tasks, and ensures the review process is as seamless as possible. By leveraging its advanced capabilities and Diamond, developers are freed from manual tasks so they can focus on writing high-quality code. Diamond integrates seamlessly into GitHub repositories, providing instant, codebase-aware feedback that eliminates review bottlenecks.
6. Practical implementation
Stacked PRs enable teams to break features into discrete backend, API, and UI components, allowing each to be developed, tested, and reviewed independently. This layered approach reduces integration risks, accelerates deployment timelines, and ensures every part of the feature is fully optimized before release. The Graphite Merge Queue automatically organizes and processes pull requests, ensuring that your main branch remains stable and up-to-date.
7. Scalability
As projects grow, so does the challenge of managing increasingly complex codebases. Stacked diffs offer a scalable solution by keeping changes modular and organized, reducing the chaos of large-scale updates. This structure supports smooth collaboration across growing teams and evolving projects. Diamond's ability to provide context-aware feedback ensures that even as codebases expand, code quality remains high.
8. Minimized Technical Debt
Frequent, incremental updates enabled by stacked PRs naturally address technical debt as part of the development process. Diamond's codebase-aware AI further helps in proactively identifying and resolving potential technical debt issues before they accumulate, ensuring cleaner, maintainable codebases.
9. Organized codebase
Stacking naturally encourages a modular, disciplined approach to development. Instead of dealing with sprawling, unwieldy updates, teams work with well-defined, self-contained changes. Diamond also enhances this by enforcing customizable coding standards and providing real-time feedback, maintaining order and clarity across the entire codebase.
10. Cultural advancement
Embracing Graphite and stacking signals a commitment to modern, forward-thinking engineering standards. It shifts team habits from reactive to proactive, emphasizing continuous improvement, accountability, and craftsmanship. By elevating your practices, you create an environment where developers thrive, code quality flourishes, and innovation becomes the norm. Diamond's integration into the development workflow reinforces this culture by providing consistent, high-quality code reviews.
Summary
Switching to Graphite, stacked PRs, and AI-enhanced reviews isn't just about speeding up code reviews—it's about refining every aspect of your development process. This modern workflow transforms collaboration, conflict resolution, and code quality, enabling your team to consistently deliver cleaner, more reliable features. In short, it's an investment in lasting excellence that will elevate every line of code you write.
If you're interested in trying out Graphite and simplifying your code reviews, sign up for your free trial here.