Glossary · AI-native development
Patch
A reviewable representation of changes to one or more files, usually expressed as additions and deletions against a known base revision.
Why it matters
A patch gives people and agents a narrow artifact to inspect, test, apply, or reject without accepting an entire working directory.
In practice
Ask a coding agent to return a unified diff, then verify that it touches only allowed files and applies cleanly to the expected commit.
Common confusion
A patch captures file changes, not the reasoning, test evidence, or approval needed to ship them.
Related terms
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