Impact Score: 5/10
Linear Diffs
Source available — automated, not human-reviewed
Component: linear · Channel: stable. Automated analysis, not a compatibility certification. How this works.
Analysis updated: 2026-10-31.
⚡ Executive Summary (TL;DR)
Linear 2026-05-27-linear-diffs. Source highlight: Agents generate large volumes of code, but individuals are still accountable for the changes that merge. This leads to a lot of review work, and the capability and performance of traditional review tools hasn’t kept up.
Who Does This Impact? (Role-Based Analysis)
💻 Software Engineers & Devs
Check the source notes against the package and APIs you use before upgrading.
📊 Product & Engineering Leads
Use the documented changes to assess relevance to your product; release frequency alone is not a quality measure.
⚙️ DevOps & Security
Verify the target version, runtime requirements and rollback procedure in the official documentation.
📄 View Raw Release Notes (Original Developer Log)
Watch video
Agents generate large volumes of code, but individuals are still accountable for the changes that merge. This leads to a lot of review work, and the capability and performance of traditional review tools hasn’t kept up.
Today, we’re releasing Linear Diffs to make reviewing code a fast and fluid experience native to Linear.
You can now review diffs from any issue with a PR, iterate on further changes with agents, and ship code from Linear. All reviews in Linear sync back to GitHub, so the current state of review work is always clear.
Guided reviews (beta)
Guided reviews help you efficiently review large PRs. When you view a diff in this format, you’ll see the core of change first, so you don’t have to dig for an entrypoint.
Each section of diffs has an explanation — starting with what the change is, then moving into its consequences. Guided reviews separate out glue code and secondary changes so you can stay focused on what matters. This style of review makes it much easier to move through large changes in a single sitting.
Guided reviews are free during beta and available for Linear customers on Business and Enterprise plans.
Review Inbox
Staying on top of reviews is easier when review notifications live alongside the rest of your work. Linear notifies your Inbox for work like review requests, your approved PRs, and comment mentions. You can set up additional real-time desktop, Slack, email, or mobile
notifications
.
We’ve also added a dedicated Reviews tab in your sidebar so you can see all your review work at once. The default focus ordering sorts reviews by what’s closest to shipping, so the work that needs your attention most rises to the top.
Reviewing code
When a review calls for changes, keep iterating from the diff surface with a background coding agent. Agent changes update the diff in real-time, so you don’t need to check out the branch locally for every small tweak.
Diffs is responsive when reviewing even very large PRs. You can view unified or split diffs, enable line wrapping and structural highlighting, and choose custom code themes.
Linear Diffs is available now on all plans. Guided reviews are free during beta and available for Linear customers on Business and Enterprise plans.
Workspace admins can enable Diffs by
upgrading
Linear’s GitHub integration for code access. Then, individual users can choose to
review diffs in Linear
.
To learn more about why we built Diffs, read
Code review should be fast
. For more on Diffs functionality, check our
documentation
.
Fixes
Agents:
Fixed choppy animation when expanding agent thoughts
Agents:
Fixed agent chat incorrectly minimizing on external link click
Agents:
Fixed the “Worked for X” label on agent session turns to measure active work time, excluding any idle wait between turns
Agents:
Fixed agent panel staying focused when expanding or collapsing
Agents:
Prevented the Ask Linear popup from reopening off-screen after the window height shrinks
Agents:
Fixed Ask Linear drafts being lost when switching between chats
Agents:
Fixed agent lists showing too many skills
Asks:
Linear Asks Agent will now automatically reply to external users when requesting additional information
Asks:
Fixed Asks Web submission attributions when the submitter logged into Asks Web before accepting their Linear workspace invite
Desktop:
Fixed an issue where the desktop application could hang when waking up your computer from sleep
Desktop:
Fixed desktop app flash of white background on new window open
Diffs:
Fixed deduplication of linked PRs in issue attachment data
Diffs:
Fixed refreshing the diff when a PR’s target branch changes (e.g., after a stacked parent merges and GitHub retargets the child)
Diffs:
Stopped attributing GitHub PR comments authored by deleted (“ghost”) users to the wrong user in notifications
Documents:
Fixed document mention notifications firing on every edit instead of just when a user is newly mentioned
Documents:
Shortened the placeholder in the “Change document subscribers” action menu so its keyboard shortcut indicator no longer gets clipped
GitHub:
Comments on a not-yet-linked GitHub PR now backfill the issue→PR link via magic-word matching the same way PR lifecycle and review events do
Inbox:
Fixed “From is not” filter to correctly exclude issue assignment notifications from integration and OAuth application-driven assignments
Inbox:
Fixed inbox badge getting stuck when arriving on a review via a legacy
/agent
URL
Insights:
Fixed a bug where two Duplicate options appeared in the Time in status filter
Integrations:
Figma links now show a clean
Figma
title instead of the raw marketing page title
Issues:
Removed Duplicate status from quick issue create and issue template
Project templates:
Allowed project-template sub-issues to target other private teams again
Sentry:
Fixed a bug where Sentry-created issues could be assigned to deactivated users in triage
Settings:
We now correctly truncate long team names in Teams settings list instead of overlapping the next column
Shortcuts:
Fixed the Copy as Prompt shortcut so it updates issue status when auto-start-on-open is enabled
Sync:
Fixed “Linear servers are not reachable” error that could appear after laptop unlock
Triage:
Fixed workspace issue templates not appearing in triage automation filters
Views:
Fixed list rows shifting horizontally when toggling a group in views with grouped columns
Improvements
Android:
Improved Android to use server-side filtering for skills
Agents:
Dashboard pages are now used as context in the Linear agent chat
Integrations:
Connecting GitHub now defaults to enabling code access
Project Slack channels:
Used an info-style toast when starting project Slack channel creation
Reviews:
Activity page file and code comment links, and PR notifications, now open whichever code view (Diffs or Guide) you last visited
Skills:
Updated empty state for skills to match other settings
Timeline:
Improved timeline projects aside panel visibility to be remembered per view instead of globally
Updates:
Removed the UI for hiding project and initiative update details