OLD SCRIPT DETECTED
“A fast approval means they didn't really look”
Try this response:
“A fast approval means the diff was clear, not that it was skipped.”SEE THE PRACTICE
Build a response for this thought—and one move to prove it.
THE THOUGHT
“A fast approval means they didn't really look”
YOUR RECORDED RESPONSE
“A fast approval means the diff was clear, not that it was skipped.”
ONE PRIVATE MOVE
Open your last three merged PRs and check whether any fast approval was later reverted or flagged — not guessed, actually checked.
The Four-Minute Approve on a 312-Line Diff
- 01 / The Notification Before You've Finished the Description
You open the pull request, paste the link into the team channel, and start typing the description — the part explaining the tricky migration logic. Before you finish the second sentence, a green check appears: Approved. Four minutes. Three hundred and twelve lines changed across six files, and the reviewer clicked through in less time than it takes to read the diff once, let alone twice.
- 02 / The Re-Audit You Run on Yourself
You scroll back through your own diff, hunting for the line they must have missed — the helper function you renamed halfway through, the edge case in the retry logic. You start listing which files couldn't possibly have loaded in four minutes. Instead of merging, you leave the PR open and quietly push one more commit fixing something nobody flagged, because catching it yourself before anyone else does feels like the only way to know the code is actually sound. The relief lasts about as long as the next PR takes to open.
- 03 / Checking What a Missed Bug Actually Looks Like
Before pushing that unprompted fix, open your team's recent PR history and look for approvals that landed in minutes, then trace what happened next — merged, deployed, still running weeks later with no revert and no incident. That's the actual evidence a fast approval leaves behind, not a feeling about how long the click should have taken.
TRACE · 01/04
How this script runs you
- You reread the diff yourself the moment 'Approved' appears, hunting for whatever they must have skipped in four minutes.
- Instead of merging, you push one more silent fix to a spot nobody flagged, just in case that's the part they missed.
- A same-minute approval bothers you more than a slow one — it reads as no one actually opened the files.
SOURCE_LOCATED · 02/04
The hidden rule underneath
The Review Trial
If an approval didn't take long enough to actually read every changed line, it doesn't count as real feedback — it's just a rubber stamp, and the code underneath is still unverified until you find the flaw yourself.
FORGING_REPLACEMENT · 03/04
Replacement lines (record these)
- A fast approval means the diff was clear, not that it was skipped.
- If something's wrong, CI and the next reviewer will catch it too.
- I don't need someone else's read time to know this code works.
Generated per person in the app — these are the flavor, not your script. Yours is built from your exact words.
INSTALL · 04/04
The protocol, on one card
When I think
“A fast approval means they didn't really look”
I say
“A fast approval means the diff was clear, not that it was skipped.”
Then I do one thing
Open your last three merged PRs and check whether any fast approval was later reverted or flagged — not guessed, actually checked.
STATUS: READY_TO_INSTALL
Wipe this thought4 minutes. Your voice. Free.
The wipe protocol
- Write the thought exactly as it plays: "A fast approval means they didn't really look". Word for word — the wipe targets the sentence, not the vibe.
- Trace the rule and the avoided action. What does this thought conveniently excuse you from doing?
- Record the replacement lines below in your own voice. Speak like you mean it — no recording, no install.
- Run the loop: play it every morning and night, log one proof action a day for 7 days.
Straight answers
Doesn't a four-minute approval on hundreds of lines prove they skimmed it?
Review speed reflects how familiar someone already is with the surrounding code, not how carefully they read it — a reviewer who followed the branch from the first commit needs far less time on the final diff than someone opening it cold.
Why do I push an extra fix nobody asked for after a fast approval?
That extra commit isn't really about the code — it's a way to feel like someone reviewed it thoroughly, even when that someone is you, checking your own work a second time.
If the approval is real, why does it feel worse than getting comments back?
Comments tell you what someone saw. A silent approval tells you nothing about what they looked at, so the mind fills the gap with the worst assumption instead of resting on it.
Related old scripts
Related self-checks
Related science
Researchers to explore
Related mechanisms
The research behind this script
- Impostor Phenomenon in Software Engineers — Guenes et al., ICSE-SEIS 2024, 2024
- Understanding and effectively mitigating code review anxiety — Lee et al., Empirical Software Engineering, 2024
- Understand team effectiveness (Project Aristotle) — Google re:Work, 2016
- Psychological impacts of AI-induced job displacement among Indian IT professionals: a Delphi-validated thematic analysis — PMC, 2024