Cline’s Explain Changes aims to demystify AI-generated diffs
AI coding assistants produce changes at a pace that outstrips manual review, and many teams have encountered code that “works” but erodes clarity, intent, or maintainability. Cline’s new feature, Explain Changes, generates plain-English inline explanations for diffs to surface the why behind every change. Available both as a button for Cline-generated tasks and as a /explain-changes slash command for any git diff, the feature targets faster PR reviews, clearer onboarding, and earlier detection of what the company describes as AI-generated “slop.”
The problem: working code that hides intent
AI-generated contributions often introduce patterns and abstractions that are syntactically valid but increase cognitive load: over‑engineering, cargo‑culted patterns, or refactors that break tests under the guise of improvements. These changes can make PRs longer and harder to reason about, producing a review bottleneck where reviewers either spend excessive time or approve without understanding the implications.
What Explain Changes does
Explain Changes annotates diffs with AI-produced, context-aware comments that describe what was changed and why. The explanations aim to be:
- Specific — focusing on intent rather than only what code does
- Context-aware — drawing on the surrounding codebase and prior conversations
- Interactive — allowing follow-up questions on any explanation
- Actionable — surfacing potential issues (over‑engineering, redundant layers, performance tradeoffs)
Two usage modes are available: an Explain Changes button that runs automatically after a Cline task, and a /explain-changes command that accepts any git diff (commits, branches, PRs, staged or uncommitted work).
Where it helps most
Explain Changes addresses several common pain points:
- Long PR reviews — reduces time spent deciphering large diffs by summarizing architectural and behavioral changes. The source gives an example where a 45‑minute stare at an 800‑line diff becomes a 5‑minute clarification.
- Slop catching — flags redundant or conflicting changes (for example, adding a new cache when Redis already exists) before merging.
- Assisted learning — helps less experienced engineers understand design choices in a PR, turning confusing patterns into teachable moments.
- Self-review — provides immediate explanations for uncommitted work so commit messages can be more meaningful and intent clearer.
How it works (at a high level)
Explain Changes leverages project context to produce more useful explanations than a plain diff parser. It references architectural patterns discussed in the repository, relates changes to prior conversations, and answers follow-up questions such as the expected performance impact or potential breakage scenarios. The feature flags vague justifications (“used best practices”) as potential red flags and surfaces cases where simplicity might be preferred.
Practical commands and workflow
Common example commands documented in the source include:
/explain-changes for my last 3 commits/explain-changes for PR #666/explain-changes between main and feature-auth/explain-changes for my uncommitted work/explain-changes from v1.0.0 to v2.0.0/explain-changes for src/auth in the last 5 commits
A suggested workflow is: let an AI agent generate code, run Explain Changes to review intent and tradeoffs, ask clarifying questions where needed, then approve or request simplification based on those explanations.
Documentation and further reading
- Explain Changes docs: https://docs.cline.bot/features/explain-changes?ref=cline.ghost.io
- Slash command details: https://docs.cline.bot/features/slash-commands/explain-changes?ref=cline.ghost.io
- Cline docs: https://docs.cline.bot/?ref=cline.ghost.io
Original source: https://cline.bot/blog/ai-slop-detector
