Images & binary files
Not every changed file is a textual hunk. Guided Review still walks those files in the plan, but the diff pane behaves differently for images and for binary or elided content. Same behavior in the Chrome extension and the CLI.
Image previews
When a changed path looks like an image the overlay can display (png, jpg / jpeg, gif, webp, svg, bmp, ico, avif, tif / tiff, and a few related types), the diff pane shows a preview instead of a line patch:
- Added / removed — one side’s image (or an empty side).
- Modified — old and new side by side in split view, or stacked depending on unified / split.
- SVG — often reconstructed from the textual patch immediately; other formats load via the host (GitHub raw fetch on the extension, local blob on the CLI).
If the preview cannot load, you fall back to the binary empty state below.
Binary and elided files
Some files have no useful textual patch in the unified diff — true binaries, Git LFS pointers, or content GitHub / git elided as too large. For those, the pane shows:
(binary or elided — no textual diff available)
On a GitHub PR, Guided Review may offer a link into the Files changed tab for that path so you can inspect it on github.com. Locally, open the file in your editor or git show if you need the bytes.
Comments and search
| Action | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Comment mode | Needs selectable diff lines. Binary / empty image units usually have none — c has nothing to attach to. |
| Diff search | Binary / elided files still contribute path hits; there is no line content to match. |
| Image units with a preview | Treat like other units for navigation; line comments still need selectable text lines. |
How the plan treats them
The pipeline still assigns these files to review units. The model sees a short “binary or elided” marker in the prompt instead of dumped bytes (How a review plan works). Large or mostly binary diffs often produce thinner structure — see Troubleshooting → Plan generation fails.
You still step past them with ← / → so asset and lockfile noise stay in order with the rest of the change.
Next. Reading the overlay · How a review plan works · Leave line comments · Your first review