Code Review

Overview

Review whether the current changes achieve their intended behavior, preserve affected contracts and meet applicable delivery constraints. Apply SOLID, architecture, security, quality and removal guidance alongside that reasoning. Default to review-only output unless the user asks to implement changes.

Conventions

Load these through packet-preparation.md's preparation sequence. It supplies complete original instruction text in fewer Read calls; the direct-read fallback uses the same sources.

• Read capy knowledge base conventions at shared-capy-knowledge-protocol.md.
• Always read change context at shared-change-context.md and the common method at functional-review.md, even when no profile matches.
• Read task scope at shared-review-scope-protocol.md; pending work does not excuse regressions in current flows.
• Read profile detection at shared-profile-detection.md. Use its records to select and load domain guidance before investigation.

Required Outputs

Before declaring the review complete, verify all outputs are delivered:

• [ ] Review report presented to user
• [ ] Intent, scope/baselines, inspected behavior, applicable compatibility conclusions and evidence limits reported
• [ ] P0/P1 systemic findings indexed as kk:review-findings (skip if no qualifying findings)
• [ ] Required next steps handled, or clean review closed without proposing new work

Indexing is owned by this skill — callers (e.g., /kk:implement) do NOT duplicate it.

Review Modes

Standard Mode (/kk:review-code)

Reviews code in the main conversation context. Fast, single-pass review using the workflow below.

Isolated Mode (/kk:review-code:isolated)

Delegates detection to independent reviewers that did not write the code, then annotates their findings with author context. One internal code-reviewer sub-agent plus external review chosen once at discovery: pal codereview when an API model is available, otherwise one pal clink CLI review per eligible non-authoring provider using its configured model (variable count; on the clink roster the authoring provider is excluded; PAL's shipped clients get default provider mappings that the report labels as assumed, and an operator declaration, for example in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, overrides them and is required for any other client name). Produces a report organized by agreement level with corroborated findings highlighted.

• Cost: Higher (sub-agent + one or more external reviews + annotation); clink cost scales with the roster size
• Isolation: True — reviewers have zero authorship bias or session context; each external reviewer gets a fresh conversation
• Degradation: Graceful — a failed reviewer is disclosed and the others proceed; an API runtime failure never switches to clink; if every reviewer fails, suggests standard mode fallback
• Requires: a PAL build whose listmodels exposes CLI client observations in every mode for the clink path; unresolved discovery keeps the internal review with an explicit external coverage limit. Operator setup (the minimum PAL build, CLI read access outside the project, provider declarations) is described in the plugin README under "Isolated reviews with external models"
• Best for: When extra rigor is worth the cost (pre-merge, high-stakes changes)

See review-isolated.md for the isolated workflow.

Severity Levels

Workflow

Mandatory ordering — methodology before evidence

The standard workflow below is strictly sequential. Load the process, shared protocols, common functional method and every resolved profile checklist before source investigation, `capy_search`, findings, edits or tests. After basic process instructions load, the sole early-content exception is bounded inspection to resolve declared detection/conditional-load predicates: at most approximately 16 KiB per candidate file; log predicate/path, and conservatively load an instruction when its conditional is undecidable within the bound. No behavioral analysis or full-diff investigation is permitted during routing.

This ordering is load-bearing, not stylistic. Reviewing from a diff before loading profile checklists is the known failure mode this skill is designed to prevent: the LLM has enough from the diff to produce plausible findings, and optimizes away the methodology if the workflow permits.

Phases (same order as review-process.md):

1. Prepare instruction packets — read packet-preparation.md, run the helper below for bootstrap, and Read every returned part; this loads process, shared protocols, common method and all known detection rules
2. Select the diff — use status/filenames only; task scope belongs to investigation
3. Detect profiles and route checklists — read and reconcile every known detection rule; filename/metadata signals, then bounded declared predicates; no deferred conditionals
4. Read every resolved checklist — build and Read the selected checklist packet; its manifest rejects missing index decisions and skipped always-load files. Confirm actual complete Read results before proceeding
5. Investigate — read available component contracts and establish context/task scope, then selected diff/current files; trace behavior and historical compatibility, and search relevant knowledge
6. Apply profile and general checklists to that behavior
7. Self-check findings and confidence through targeted verification
8. Index systemic P0/P1 findings as kk:review-findings
9. Present findings, coverage and evidence-qualified verdict
10. Close a clean review; confirm only supported next steps needing authorization
11. Verify required outputs

See review-process.md for the detailed step-by-step process.

Preparation helper: execute scripts/prepare_instructions.py with Python 3 using its resolved path. The installed path is ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/review-code/scripts/prepare_instructions.py. The helper reads instructions only and prints packet paths. Creating a packet does not load it: use Read on every part, including continuations, before source investigation. If execution is unavailable, use the direct-read fallback.

Invocation

Standard mode:

/kk:review-code

Isolated mode with independent sub-agents:

/kk:review-code:isolated