Pull requests as a design tool

A pull request is a design review that ships. Opening them myself changed how I work with developers.

Instead of a ticket that says “tighten the spacing on the settings panel”, I send the change. The developer reviews my code, I review the result, and nothing gets lost in translation.

Start small

My first pull requests were copy fixes and colour tokens. Then hover states, then whole components. Each one earned a bit more trust.

The goal isn’t to replace engineers. It’s to stop handing them homework.

The surprising part is how much faster small polish lands. It used to wait for a sprint. Now it waits for a review.