atgreen Reviewing-Work
Overview
Core principle: Fresh eyes catch what yours can't — you're too close to code you just wrote. Review early and often (per meaningful chunk, not just at the end), get it from a context that doesn't share your assumptions, and engage the feedback as a technical evaluation, not a social one. Two halves: getting the review, and receiving it well.
Getting a Review — Use Fresh Context
The reviewer must not inherit your session's history and rationalizations. Give it exactly what it needs, constructed on purpose:
- A fresh reviewer subagent (dispatching-subagents) with a crafted brief: the diff range (base…head), what the change is meant to do, the requirements/constraints it must meet, and "return severity-ranked findings." It keeps the diff in its context; only the findings come back to you.
- Or an independent model — consulting-codex in review or challenge mode for a second opinion.
Mandatory after each task in a fan-out, after a major feature, and before anything merges. "It's simple" is not a reason to skip — simple changes carry the bugs you stopped looking for.
Receiving a Review — Technical, Not Emotional
Review is evaluation of the code, not of you. Respond to the substance.
Forbidden reflexes: "You're absolutely right!", "Great catch!", "Thanks so much!" — performative agreement and gratitude. They add nothing and often precede applying a wrong fix to please the reviewer. State the fix (or the disagreement) instead.
The response pattern for each item: READ → UNDERSTAND → VERIFY (is it actually true for this code?) → EVALUATE (does the fix fit, or does it break something / violate YAGNI?) → RESPOND → IMPLEMENT.
- If any item is unclear, STOP and clarify all items before implementing any — items can be related, and fixing one blind can undo another.
- Verify before implementing. A reviewer (especially an external model) can be wrong for this
codebase. Check the claim: does it reproduce? does the fix break a caller?
grepfor real usage. - Push back with reasoning when the feedback is wrong, YAGNI, or wrong-for-this-stack. A reasoned "no" is a valid review outcome. Agreement is not the goal; correctness is.
Act by Severity
| Severity | Action |
|---|---|
| Critical (breaks, unsafe, wrong) | Fix immediately, before anything else. |
| Important (real problem, not breaking) | Fix before proceeding past this chunk. |
| Minor (style, nit, maybe-later) | Note it — file a bead if deferring — don't let it block. |
Order the fixes blocking → simple → complex. Verify each fix (evidence-before-claims) and confirm no regressions before moving on. Then, if the reviewer raised anything load-bearing, one scoped re-review of just those changes.
Common Mistakes
- Reviewing with your own warm context. You'll rubber-stamp your own reasoning. Use a fresh reviewer.
- Performative agreement. "You're so right!" then a wrong fix. Verify, then state what you're doing.
- Applying external feedback blindly. Wrong-for-this-codebase advice sounds authoritative. Check it against reality.
- Batch-implementing unclear items. Clarify everything first; related items fixed in isolation collide.
- Letting minor nits block the merge. File them as beads and move; don't gold-plate under review.