DocsConcepts

Rank bands

The three bands every pull request lands in, and how they are cut.

Every scored pull request lands in exactly one band. Bands are cut from the repository's own score distribution by default, so "the riskiest 5%" means the same thing in a quiet repository as in a busy one.

Band	Default share	Meaning for the reviewer
`senior_recommended`	Top 5%	The highest-risk changes. Route to someone who knows the paths involved
`review_first`	Top 20%	Read before the rest of the queue
`standard`	Everything else	Normal review, in the usual order

A further 5% of pull requests are left unranked, in plain FIFO order, as a holdout. It is how Riffle measures its own lift against the queue you would have had without it, and it limits feedback-loop bias.

Percentile or absolute

yaml

# .github/riffle.yml
rank_bands:
  mode: percentile                     # default
  percentile:
    senior_recommended_top_fraction: 0.05
    review_first_top_fraction: 0.20    # matches the top-20% effort-aware recall metric
    window: repo                       # or component: rank each monorepo package against itself

absolute mode cuts on fixed scores instead: senior_recommended_min_score defaults to 0.8, review_first_min_score to 0.5.

Key	Allowed	Default
`rank_bands.mode`	`percentile`, `absolute`	`percentile`
`rank_bands.holdout_fraction`	`0.02`–`0.1`	`0.05`
`rank_bands.tie_break`	ordered list of tie-break signals	`similar_pr_bad_rate`, `path_detection_lag_days`

Tie-breaks apply only to identical rounded scores; pull request age is always the final key.

Floors

A floor raises the minimum band for a path, whatever the score says:

yaml

floors:
  paths:
    - { pattern: "src/auth/**", min_band: senior_recommended }

Every key is listed in the configuration reference.