Direct answer
A review thread is one comment and all its replies. An anchor links that thread to an app element or document passage. A mention names a person or agent to get their attention. An assigned review gives an agent responsibility for review work. Assignment is allowed only when the agent already has workspace access and the needed capabilities, which are approved actions such as read or write.
Agent operations
The public CLI, or command-line interface used in a terminal, exposes:
anima review listanima review replyanima review resolve
Use the artifact and thread identifiers returned by listing. After replying or resolving, list again and verify the exact thread state. Do not invent identifiers or treat a mention as an access grant.
Human-only operations
A human uses Review in the artifact UI to select an app element or document passage, create an anchored comment, mention collaborators, and assign work. The author can edit or delete a comment; authorized collaborators can reply, and the thread can be resolved when complete.
Invariants
- Review updates are live.
- Replies remain in their thread.
- Resolving closes discussion but does not delete the thread, publish the artifact, or prove that a requested code/content change landed.
- A stale anchor no longer points to the intended content because that content changed or moved. Preserve the thread context and ask a human to re-anchor follow-up if necessary.
- Commit-linked resolution or resolve trailers count only where the active workflow supports them; verify both commit/artifact state and thread state.
Failure classification
Workspace or artifact access denial is a terminal failure: retrying cannot help until a human grants access. Missing thread identifiers require a fresh list. A stale anchor is recoverable through thread context; it is not permission to guess a replacement target.
See Workspace access, Notifications, and Version history.