Instinct Audit

instinct-review checks whether one diff got the scrutiny it deserved. This checks the same question at repo scale: across recent history, did Critical-tier-shaped changes actually leave the reasoning SKILL.md obligates, or did they just happen?

What counts as Critical-tier-shaped, retroactively

Look at commits (default: recent history, or whatever range/timeframe the user names) whose diff shows any of:

• a removed or renamed public function, export, endpoint, or config key
• a new required parameter, or a narrowed/changed default, on something with more than one caller
• a deleted file, module, or dependency that other code imported
• a changed trust-boundary surface (auth, payment, deletion, data access)
• a change to a canonical rule/prompt/policy text that other files or hosts derive from (this project's own SKILL.md; equally, a shared ESLint config, a schema other services validate against, an IaC module other stacks import) — easy to miss because the diff is "just words" or "just config," but the blast radius is every consumer of that text, not the file itself. Found by actually running this checklist against this project's own history: the commit tightening SKILL.md's Q2 wording changes classification behavior across every host this project ships to, which is a bigger blast radius than most of the literal code-function bullets above, and none of them would have caught it.

What to check for each one

1. Does the commit message state a tradeoff, not just describe the change? "Removed X" is a description. "Removed X because Y, chose Z over keeping X deprecated" is a tradeoff.
2. Was an alternative named anywhere — commit message, linked PR or issue, a code comment — or does history show only the path that got taken, with no evidence anything else was weighed?
3. Is there a verification artifact (test, assertion) added or updated in the same change, given the blast radius the bullet above implies?

Reporting

One row per commit that qualifies as Critical-tier-shaped:

<short-hash> <one-line summary> — provenance: present|missing. verification: present|missing.

Lead with the ones missing both — highest-value findings first, not the longest list. End with a one-line count, not a restated table. Zero qualifying commits in range is a real, useful result: say No Critical-tier-shaped changes found in <range>., not a padded non-answer.

Boundaries

Reads git history and diffs only; changes nothing and proposes no fixes. Rewriting old commit messages is out of scope — the point is visibility into the pattern, not retroactively editing history. If the audit surfaces a live, current problem (a breaking change with no test that's still shipping), state it as a finding for a separate, explicit request through the Gate — don't silently patch it as part of the audit.