Incremental Git Diff Ingestion (Delta-Only Code Review)

Overview

When tasked with reviewing a Pull Request, auditing recent changes, or generating release notes ("Review the latest commit for potential security regressions"), unoptimized agents dump the full contents of all modified files into the prompt context.

If a developer changed 15 lines across 8 large backend files, ingesting the full files burns 35,000+ tokens on unchanged legacy code. The model’s attention becomes diluted across thousands of lines of irrelevant code rather than focusing sharply on the modified logic.

The Incremental Git Diff Ingestion Protocol feeds strictly the Unified Diff Delta (git diff -U3), exposing the exact additions (+) and deletions (-) with 3 lines of surrounding context - reducing context consumption by 90%.

Full-File Ingestion vs. Incremental Unified Diff