review-check-redundancy

name: review-check-redundancy description: "Use before committing or pushing changes to checks/ or ai-check-cache/, and when the user asks to review check overlap. This skill critically reviews deterministic and AI-assisted checks for redundancy, prefers cheaper deterministic checks when functionality overlaps, and proposes safe consolidations without losing coverage."

Review Check Redundancy

Use this skill before commit/push when checks/, text_consistency.py, checks/AIFindings.py, ai_cache.py, or ai-check-cache/ changed, and when the user asks to review check overlap.

Review goals

• Detect redundant coverage across deterministic checks and AI-assisted findings/checks.
• Preserve functionality and backwards compatibility of check outputs as far as practical.
• Prefer deterministic checks over AI checks when both cover the same user problem.
• Keep AI coverage only for cases that remain materially fuzzy after deterministic rules are exhausted.

Required workflow

Step 1: inventory

• List changed checks and nearby related checks.
• Review matching CHECK_DOCS, tests, and README/manual references.
• Inspect ai-check-cache/ categories and rationales when AI checks are involved.
• Inspect text_consistency.py and other deterministic helpers when narrative-vs-structure coverage is involved.
• If structured QC fix proposals or updater-facing module labels changed, verify that the exported module values still match the visible QC check-prefix family seen by users and that no second competing naming scheme was introduced.

Step 2: overlap analysis

For each changed or candidate check:

• Identify the user-facing problem it detects.
• Identify the entity/fields it relies on.
• Identify every existing deterministic or AI check that overlaps with that problem.
• Classify overlap as:
  • exact duplicate
  • deterministic superset
  • AI superset
  • partial overlap
  • complementary

Step 3: resolution proposal

When redundancy exists, propose the cheapest safe resolution:

• keep the deterministic check and retire or narrow the AI check
• keep both, but clearly separate scopes
• merge check logic while preserving IDs/messages if stability matters
• convert stable AI findings into deterministic logic

Each proposal must state:

• what functionality is preserved
• what check IDs/messages would change, if any
• migration or compatibility risk
• required test/doc updates

Decision rules

• Do not remove a check only because it looks similar; prove that coverage is preserved.
• If deterministic and AI checks overlap, the deterministic rule is the default owner.
• Regex-like or heuristic findings should not stay in ai-check-cache/; move them into regular plugins.
• If AI coverage catches broader but noisy cases, keep it only for the residual fuzzy area and document that boundary.
• If live data still triggers an older check, treat that as active coverage, not dead code.

Output format

Report in this order:

1. Redundant or overlapping checks
2. Gaps where overlap is only partial
3. Recommended consolidations
4. Compatibility and testing implications

Do not implement the consolidation unless the user asks.