Self Review

Self-review

Make a changeset merge-ready before submission — no regressions, sound code, the project's conventions respected — and prove it was scrutinized: a fresh-context reviewer hunts for what would block the merge, the author answers every finding, and a compact report — scannable by a maintainer in seconds — records the outcome. The report is the review record only; the change's what/why belongs to the PR description (e.g. via /handover), never here.

Only for a changeset you authored. The fresh-context reviewer exists to escape authoring blindness, so someone else's PR has nothing to escape and belongs to maintainer-review.

Resolve the changeset

1. Resolve source and target. No input → current branch against the auto-detected target: the default branch of the upstream remote when one exists (fork workflow), else of origin — via git ls-remote --symref <remote> HEAD, never the often-absent local refs/remotes/<remote>/HEAD; that failing (e.g. offline), the sole existing candidate among main, master, develop/development (preferring upstream's remote-tracking ref, then origin's, then the local branch) — still ambiguous or none → ask. Explicit branches in the invocation win; a detached HEAD → ask which branch is under review. State the chosen target.
2. The reviewed state is the source as it stands — working tree when checked out, else tip. Uncommitted work is reviewed, not blocked, once the author sorts it: modified tracked files are part of the change or deliberate local-only tweaks (build config, data paths), the latter excluded from the diff (pathspec) and named in a procedural caveat — exclusion drops the whole path, so a tweak atop a changed file the author stashes first; untracked files likewise, and since the diff can't see them, those that belong the author git adds first — a forgotten one ships unreviewed later. The report this skill writes needs no sorting and is always excluded. Nothing beyond the tip reviewed → pinned to its SHA; otherwise unpinned — reviewed, but with no SHA for a maintainer to check the pushed head against, until stamped. Pinned is preferable, so suggest committing first when the work is ready for it — never insist, the stamp closes the gap later.
3. git fetch the target's remote (local-only target → nothing to fetch; a failed fetch → say so and ask rather than diff stale refs), then diff from the merge base <base> of target and source: git diff <base> for the working tree, git diff <base> <source> for a tip. No merge base → usually a shallow clone or wrong target: deepen (git fetch --unshallow) and retry, else ask — never fall back to diffing against the target itself, which presents its own commits as the author's. Empty diff → probably a wrong target (typical: a fork's default branch already holding the commits) — say so and ask for the true one; it needs no local ref, git fetch <url> <branch> works by URL.

Done when source branch, target, reviewed state (SHA, or working tree on SHA) and the diff's hash (git diff … | git hash-object --stdin) are recorded and the diff is non-empty.

Project rules file

.agents/docs/self-review-rules.md, when the project carries one, adds project-specific rules or overrides to the review mandate and process (extra focus areas, round cap, report handling, a pinned review required — modified tracked files then block every round, fixes committed before the next) — never to the Boundaries below. Absent → skip silently. Either way, the report states whether it was found and applied.

Review

A report already present → Stamp (below) first.

Load and follow fresh-eyes-review on the reviewed state — inputs all explicit, so it runs without its confirmation step — with:

• an intent statement — one or two sentences distilled from the task's ticket or requirements when the planning home holds them, never the document itself (it carries the author rationale excluded below), else derived from the branch name and commit subjects; derivation yielding noise (wip commits, opaque names) → ask the author for a one-liner, proposing a draft. Either way, state the intent used — the author must see what the change is judged against;
• excluded paths: the planning home and the report — author rationale and past dispositions must never reach the reviewer. Planning files the changeset itself touches ship in the PR, so they are reviewed like any other change; the report stays excluded always;
• the mandate framed as a maintainer's merge gate — would anything here block the merge? — and extended by: the project's own governing docs (contributing, agent instructions, codestyle) run as a checklist, not as background reading, against every changed file and the submission itself, whose metadata the prompt must carry (commit subjects, and any PR title, description, linked issues); and leftovers — debug prints, commented-out code, stray TODOs, accidentally committed files;
• the grounded bar: a finding exists only with a nameable concrete failure, violated rule, or redundancy — hedged speculation is out, zero findings is a valid outcome;
• an instruction to the reviewer to report back the harness and model it ran on, and whether it covered every changed file — naming any it didn't.

Done when the reviewer has returned its findings — possibly none — its provenance, and its coverage.

Disposition walk

Before the first finding, check which planning documents the task has (ticket, requirements, plan) and read any that exist: recommendations must weigh the full story. These documents still never reach the reviewer, which sees only the distilled intent (Review above).

One finding at a time, recommending a disposition with a one-line why — the author decides, and discussing the finding is offered as visibly as the dispositions themselves, never left an implicit escape hatch. Anything the author says that isn't a disposition is discussion, not a decision: answer the question, check the code, revise the recommendation, do what they ask with the finding — then the walk returns to that same finding, still open. Three dispositions close one:

• fix — apply it to the working tree now; committing stays the author's move.
• dismiss — record the author's reason, pushing once toward one a maintainer can evaluate ("the caller already null-checks", not "disagree"); "mirrors the existing pattern" counts only once that pattern is verified sound — an unchecked one ratifies its bugs; if the author insists, their words go in verbatim.
• defer — not fixed and not dismissed but handed onward: a follow-up ticket, a comment on another PR, a note the author keeps. Record the destination in one line; drafting the text is in scope, filing or posting it is not (Boundaries).

Never drop or soften a finding: every one appears in the report with its disposition. Anything fixed → a fresh round runs on the new state — fixes are new unreviewed code; committing between rounds stays the author's move (propose a commit message in the repo's style), demanded only where project rules require a pinned review. Rounds stop when one yields nothing fixed — clean, or every new finding dismissed or deferred — or at the cap of 3 rounds per invocation, there to bound cost; the author can stop earlier at any point, or explicitly ask for rounds beyond the cap. Every fix no later round covered leaves a "fixes not re-reviewed" caveat in the report. Dispositions carry forward across rounds: a re-raised finding matching a dismissed or deferred one keeps that disposition and is not re-walked; one matching a fixed finding means the fix didn't hold — reopen it and walk it again. The report lists each finding once, with its latest disposition.

Done when every finding is dispositioned and a stop condition has ended the rounds.

Report

<slug>.SELF-REVIEW.md in the task's planning home, per the project's planning-directory convention (e.g. .agents/plans/<slug>/); reuse the slug of the task's existing artifacts (ticket, requirements, plan) — none → derive it from context (branch name, the changes); no planning home resolvable → default to .agents/plans/<slug>/, stating the choice rather than asking. Re-runs and later rounds update the file in place — read it first and carry its rounds and dispositions forward, under the carry-forward rule — one file per task, never versioned copies: its destination is a single upload. It is for pasting into the PR description or a comment, not for committing, unless the project rules file says otherwise — either way committing is the author's move, never the agent's.

Two parts — maintainers drown in AI-generated review walls, so the visible part stays minimal. Visible, each line its own paragraph (blank lines between, no blockquote): the heading, Outcome, outcome-weakening caveats, Reviewed, By, verification evidence (e.g. testing performed). Everything else collapses into <details>, in order: Intent, Project rules, Diff, procedural caveats, the rounds; the blank line after </summary> is required — without it the markdown inside won't render. Placement, unless project rules explicitly override: a caveat is visible iff it weakens what Outcome claims (fixes not re-reviewed, incomplete coverage naming the unreviewed files, a same-context fallback), procedural confirmations (e.g. files confirmed local-only) collapse; any other line is visible iff it records verification performed or qualifies the outcome — proof-of-process collapses.

Compact above all: one line per finding, fusing location and concrete failure; the full prose stays in the session. The Reviewed line always carries the latest round's state (working tree on <SHA>, marked unpinned, when not a commit; once stamped, the new SHA with stamped from <that state>) and diffstat; Diff its full hash, for the Stamp; history lives in the round headings, each naming the state it reviewed. Provenance exactly as the environment reports it, unknown when it doesn't — never guessed or recalled; the reviewer's model, when it differs from the session's, appended to the By line as review by <model>; skill version from this file's frontmatter, date = today.

# Self-review — my-feature → main

**Outcome** 4 findings — 2 fixed, 1 deferred, 1 dismissed — final round clean

**Reviewed** `def5678` (`my-feature` vs `main`, merge-base diff — 12 files, +340 −120)

**By** <harness>, <model> — self-review v<version>, <date>

<details>
<summary>Review details (2 rounds)</summary>

**Intent** <the intent statement the review ran against>

**Project rules** `.agents/docs/self-review-rules.md` not present

**Diff** `9f2c1e0b7d3a4c5e6f718293a4b5c6d7e8f90123`

## Round 1 — `abc1234`, 4 findings

1. `src/foo.c:142` — null deref when the timer expires mid-update → **fixed**
2. `db/updates/xyz.sql:3` — DELETE misses linked_id rows, orphans on re-run → **fixed**
3. `src/bar.c:210` — retry loop has no backoff, hammers the API during an outage → **deferred**:
   predates this change, author files it as a follow-up ticket
4. `src/foo.c:97` — guard duplicates the check 4 lines up → **dismissed**: mirrors the pattern in
   this file, checked sound at :61 and :88; refactor out of scope

## Round 2 — `def5678`, clean

</details>

Done when the report holds the outcome line, intent, changeset refs with diffstat, diff hash, provenance with skill version and date, rules-file status, and every round with its reviewed state and dispositioned findings — each on its mandated side of the split.

Stamp

Step 3's hash equal to the report's Diff → content unchanged (after committing the reviewed work, an amend, a rebase leaving the diff byte-identical): no round; Reviewed line set to the current state — a tip → stamped from <previous state> replacing unpinned — then Wrap up. Different → say so, Review onward. Done when the report carries the current state or Review has started.

Wrap up

Print: the report's project-relative path, with the instruction to paste its content into the PR description or a comment; a warning not to commit the report — a later git add . drags it into the PR — unless the project rules file says otherwise; a reminder to run the project's usual checks (build, lint, tests) before pushing — this skill never runs them; and that the pushed head must match the reported SHA: unpinned → commit, then re-invoke to stamp; any later commit → the same re-invocation, a stamp when the content held, else a re-run. Done when all four are printed.

Boundaries

• Files written: the report, and the fixes the author approved during the walk — nothing else.
• Read-only git plus git fetch; no commit, push, or PR operation — publishing is the author's.