[BUG] code-review plugin subagents fail silently on PRs with large diffs (>25K tokens)
Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Feb 14, 2026 by cameronsjo Closed Feb 17, 2026
Description
The code-review@claude-code-plugins plugin (used via anthropics/claude-code-action@v1) silently produces zero review comments on PRs where the unified diff exceeds ~25,000 tokens (~75KB).
Steps to Reproduce
- Configure
claude-code-action@v1with the code-review plugin:
``yaml``
uses: anthropics/claude-code-action@v1
with:
plugins: 'code-review@claude-code-plugins'
prompt: '/code-review:code-review owner/repo/pull/N'
claude_args: '--max-turns 25'
show_full_output: true
- Open a PR with ~2,000 lines changed across 23 files (~120KB / ~41K tokens unified diff)
- Review runs to completion (green check) but posts zero comments
Root Cause (from log analysis)
The plugin architecture:
- Pre-flight check passes ("CONTINUE - PR needs review")
- Summary subagent completes
- 4 review subagents launched in parallel (2 CLAUDE.md compliance, 2 bug detection)
- Each subagent runs
gh pr diff N→ output exceeds Bash tool limit → persisted to file - Subagents try to
Readthe persisted file → "File content (41722 tokens) exceeds maximum allowed tokens (25000)" - Subagents spend all their turns trying to paginate with offset/limit, then hit their internal turn limit
- No subagent ever returns results → main agent never reaches the
pr-commentsposting step - Action exits successfully with zero output
Key Details
--max-turns 25only controls the main agent's turns, not the subagent turn limits- Increasing
--max-turnsfrom default to 25 extended subagent runtime from ~3 min to ~6 min but didn't resolve - The
pr-commentstool is listed as available but never invoked in any run - The action reports success (exit 0) despite producing no review
Expected Behavior
- Subagents should chunk or paginate large diffs without exhausting their turn budget
- Or: the plugin should fall back to per-file diff review when the full diff exceeds the Read tool limit
- Or: the action should report a warning/failure when no review comments were produced despite a non-empty diff
Environment
anthropics/claude-code-action@v1code-review@claude-code-pluginsfrom marketplacehttps://github.com/anthropics/claude-code.git- PR: ~23 files, ~2,000 lines, ~120KB unified diff (~41K tokens)
Workaround
None currently. The plugin works fine for smaller PRs (estimated <25K tokens / <75KB diff). Large PRs silently get no review.
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