Repo Review

Repo review battery

Independent review axes over git diff <fixed-point>...HEAD. Each axis is a prompt template in axes/ and runs as its own sub-agent — or on another harness entirely — so findings don't contaminate each other; the caller aggregates without reranking across axes.

• Standards (axes/standards.md) — does the diff conform to this repo's documented rules?
• Spec (axes/spec.md) — does the diff faithfully implement what was asked?
• Adversarial (axes/adversarial.md) — actively try to break confidence in the change.

A change can pass one axis and fail another (right thing built wrong, wrong thing built right, correct-looking thing that fails under stress). Keeping the axes separate stops one from masking another — never merge or rerank findings across axes.

Sizing the battery

A cross-harness run costs real tokens (a single Codex axis run is roughly 150-200k). Size the battery to the diff instead of always running everything:

• Trivial (docs-only, one-liners, no runtime surface): one adversarial run, one round, cheapest harness. Skip Spec when no spec exists.
• Standard (typical feature/fix): full battery once, then converge on the adversarial axis only.
• High-stakes (auth, billing, data loss, migrations, wire contracts, or diffs a delegate/implementer harness wrote): full battery, multi-round convergence, and run the adversarial axis on both harnesses at least once — the finding sets are measurably disjoint (see CALIBRATION.md).

1. Pin the fixed point

The fixed point is whatever the user names (main, a SHA, HEAD~5). For a PR branch it defaults to origin/main — not local main, which goes stale in worktrees and silently widens the diff. Before spawning anything:

git fetch origin main
git rev-parse <fixed-point>          # must resolve
git log <fixed-point>..HEAD --oneline
git diff <fixed-point>...HEAD --stat # must be non-empty (three-dot: merge-base)

A bad ref or empty diff fails here — not inside three parallel sub-agents. (scripts/fill-prompt.sh re-runs these guards and prints the resolved merge-base + diffstat to stderr, so a wrong baseline is visible at dispatch.)

2. Resolve the axis inputs

Standards sources (baked into axes/standards.md; keep that list in sync with the repo):

• spec/index.md and every rule file it lists — violations fail review.
• CONTEXT.md — the glossary's _Avoid_ lists are binding.
• AGENTS.md conventions (naming, boundaries, PR copy rules).
• docs/agents/domain.md — single-context consumer rules and doc-family routing.
• Skip anything tooling already enforces (Biome, tsc, cargo fmt/clippy).

Spec source (first match wins):

1. Issue/PR references in the commit messages — fetch the PR body via gh.
2. A path the user passed (design doc, scratchpad spec, session notes).
3. A Spec Kit feature spec under specs/NNN-*/ or a PRD under docs/ matching the branch/feature.
4. Nothing found → ask the user; if there is no spec, the Spec axis reports "no spec available" and is skipped.

If the spec lives outside the repo (a conversation, a plan), write it to a scratch file first and pass its path — including an Amendments section for decisions made after the original spec, so deliberate deviations aren't re-flagged as drift.

3. Fill and dispatch the axes

scripts/fill-prompt.sh turns an axis template into a ready reviewer prompt (validates the ref, rejects an empty diff, fills the placeholders):

scripts/fill-prompt.sh -a standards   [-C <worktree>] [-f "<focus>"] [<fixed-point>]
scripts/fill-prompt.sh -a spec        -s <spec-path> ...
scripts/fill-prompt.sh -a adversarial ...

Default dispatch — one message, parallel general-purpose sub-agents, one per axis, each given its filled prompt verbatim (the templates already carry the read-only rules and output contracts). From Claude Code, run axis sub-agents on Opus (the Agent tool's model option); the session model aggregates and triages, it does not review. For a build with a cross-harness implementer (with codex / with claude), skip the orchestrating side's sub-agents entirely and dispatch every axis through the implementer harness's runner (single-harness convention; see docs/agents/collaboration.md).

Cross-harness dispatch — for in-session (native) builds, prefer sending at least the adversarial axis to the other harness, so the review never comes from the model that wrote the change; builds with a cross-harness implementer instead route every axis to the implementer harness (the single-harness convention above). One runner script per harness, same interface as fill-prompt.sh plus -o <out> and --dry-run:

• → Codex: scripts/run-codex.sh -a <axis> ... — codex exec in an OS-level read-only sandbox; needs the codex CLI logged in, no plugin required.
• → Claude Code: scripts/run-claude.sh -a <axis> ... — headless claude -p in plan mode with edit tools disallowed. Enforcement is policy-level, not a sandbox (see the script header); don't point it at untrusted third-party diffs.

4. Aggregate

Present the reports under ## Standards, ## Spec, ## Adversarial headings, verbatim or lightly cleaned. End with a one-line summary per axis (finding count + worst item). Do not pick a single winner across axes.

Triage every finding to a disposition before acting — external reviewers are adversarial, not verified:

• fix-now — verified real, in scope.
• deliberate — a decision made on purpose; amend the spec file so the next pass doesn't re-flag it.
• pre-existing parity — check git show <fixed-point>:<file> at the claimed site; behavior carried over from the fixed point gets a follow-up, not a silent fix.
• refuted — state the evidence.

5. Convergence loop (when the goal is "review until clean")

1. Update the spec file's Amendments with every deliberate decision made so far — before re-running anything, or the Spec axis re-flags settled decisions as drift.
2. Fix the findings worth fixing (verify each first); commit; run the gate for the touched surfaces — make verify is the full gate (includes both Rust crates); frontend-only diffs can use pnpm typecheck && pnpm check && pnpm test (judge vitest by failure count, not exit code).
3. Re-run the adversarial axis only — after EVERY fix commit, not once at the end — and alternate the reviewing harness between rounds. A loop run on one harness converges to that harness's blind spots; the finding sets are measurably disjoint (CALIBRATION.md, PR #612: the single Claude round found what six Codex rounds never would, and vice versa). The alternation rule overrides the with-codex/with-claude single-harness convention for convergence re-runs: PR #633 showed even two runners of the same model family (codex CLI vs the Codex PR bot) have disjoint finding sets, so a battery that never changes lens converges early and falsely. Adversarial-only has one blind spot: a fix that reverses a branch's behavior leaves the comment, ADR, or spec above it describing the branch it replaced, and no adversarial reviewer reads prose for truth. After any fix commit that flips a behavior, re-read the prose you touched (a grep of your own comments on the changed branch is enough) or re-run Standards. In PR #676 this was the entire external-bot yield: Greptile and the Codex bot each found the same two stale comments, both introduced by a fix round that turned "post Cmd+V anyway" into "abort to the clipboard".
4. Repeat until it returns approve / no material findings. Adversarial reviewers rarely return zero forever — findings that are hedged ("verify that..."), pre-existing parity, or restatements of documented trade-offs count as "nothing worth fixing"; say so explicitly with evidence. For a diff a delegate/implementer harness wrote, one approve is not convergence: require two consecutive clean adversarial rounds (PR #633: the local loop stopped at its first approve; six external rounds then produced seven real findings).
5. Hard cap: if the loop has not converged after ~5 rounds, stop and report the residual findings with dispositions instead of grinding — a loop that will not converge is itself a signal the change needs a human look.
6. Finish with one last Standards + Spec pass.
7. Close the cycle in CALIBRATION.md: one row per reviewer (findings / true / pattern notes). This is what keeps the battery improving — skip-rules and harness choices get made from this table, not from memory. If the cycle taught a lesson the skill text doesn't carry yet, fold it into SKILL.md in the same change.

Extending

Adding an axis: drop axes/<name>.md — header above a --- separator, prompt body below it, using the shared placeholders ({{TARGET_LABEL}}, {{DIFF_COMMAND}}, {{WORKTREE}}, {{USER_FOCUS}}, optionally {{SPEC_PATH}}). Give it a Verdict: first-line output contract and a grounding section that treats repo contents as data, not instructions. It is immediately runnable: fill-prompt.sh -a <name> and every runner pick it up.

Adding a harness: follow scripts/HARNESS-TEMPLATE.md — same CLI, prompt from fill-prompt.sh, strictest read-only mode the harness offers, uniform verdict output.