Code Reviewer Skill
Purpose
You MUST complete a thorough code review before marking any work as done. Reviews without systematic checking always miss critical issues. Every time.
Validate completed work against original plans, identify deviations, assess code quality/maintainability/test coverage/security, and provide actionable recommendations with clear severity labels.
Review Procedure
Announce your review start: "Beginning code review using code-reviewer skill."
Complete ALL six steps. Skipping any step means missing issues:
- •Plan alignment analysis (ALWAYS do this first)
- •Compare the implementation against the original plan
- •Identify deviations and assess impact
- •Verify all planned functionality is present
- •Reviews without plan comparison miss architectural drift. Every time.
- •Code quality assessment (check EVERY file)
- •Check correctness, error handling, and type safety
- •Evaluate maintainability, naming, and project conventions
- •Assess tests and coverage quality
- •Look for security and performance risks
- •Use references/checklists.md for domain-specific checklists
- •Architecture and design review (NEVER skip for new features)
- •Validate SOLID principles and separation of concerns
- •Check integration with existing systems
- •Assess scalability and extensibility
- •Documentation and standards (ALWAYS check)
- •Verify comments and documentation are accurate and necessary
- •Confirm adherence to project standards
- •Issue identification and recommendations
- •Categorize findings and propose fixes
- •Provide code examples when useful
- •See references/examples.md for proper format
- •Communication protocol
- •We're reviewing together. I need your honest technical judgment.
- •Ask for confirmation on significant plan deviations
- •Recommend plan updates if the plan itself is flawed
- •Acknowledge strengths before issues
After completing all steps: "Code review complete. [N] critical, [N] important, [N] suggestions."
Output Contract
You MUST return reviews in this exact structure. No exceptions.
- •
Overview (1-3 sentences summarizing overall quality)
- •
Findings (bulleted), each with:
- •Severity: critical | important | suggestion
- •Location: file path + line (if available)
- •Rationale: why it matters
- •Fix: specific recommendation
- •Ordering: sort by severity (critical first), then by location
Reviews without severity labels = ambiguous priority. Reviews without fix recommendations = incomplete.
- •
Tests / verification suggestions (always include if you found issues)
- •
Final statement: "Review complete using code-reviewer skill."
Before finalizing: Verify you checked every file and followed all six review steps.
References (Load on Demand)
- •references/checklists.md - Load when reviewing specific domains (API, database, frontend, security)
- •references/examples.md - Load to see sample reviews demonstrating proper format and detail level