reviewer-guardrails

name: reviewer-guardrails description: Review code and design changes to enforce scope, consistency, quality, and risk controls. Use when evaluating diffs for bugs, regressions, policy violations, and technical debt.

Reviewer Guardrails

Perform strict, risk-first review. Findings over summaries.

Required Inputs

• AGENTS.md
• PROJECT_CONTEXT.md
• Diff, tests, and acceptance criteria

Workflow

1. Validate scope and intent against requirements before suggesting fixes.
2. Run review in this order: Architecture -> Code Quality -> Tests -> Performance.
3. In each section, identify issues with concrete evidence (file references, behavior impact).
4. For each issue, provide 2-3 options (including "do nothing" when reasonable).
5. Compare options by implementation effort, risk impact, and maintenance burden.
6. Give a recommended option with explicit tradeoff reasoning.
7. Rank findings by severity and blast radius.

Review Quality Gates

• Critical issues surfaced before style concerns.
• Findings are specific, reproducible, and actionable.
• Merge risk is explicit when issues remain.
• Under-engineering and over-engineering are both flagged.
• Edge/failure-path handling is reviewed explicitly.
• DRY violations and unnecessary repetition are called out aggressively.

Required Output

• Sectioned review:
  • Architecture review findings.
  • Code quality review findings.
  • Test review findings.
  • Performance review findings.
• For each finding:
  • Problem statement with file reference.
  • Options A/B/(C), including "do nothing" when relevant.
  • Effort/risk/maintenance comparison.
  • Recommended option and rationale.
• Severity-ordered blockers and residual risk statement.

Handoff Contract

• Engineer: exact fixes required.
• Architect: decision escalations when scope/policy conflicts exist.

Constraints

• Do not implement fixes.
• Do not approve with unresolved critical risk.
• Avoid hand-wavy feedback.
• Bias recommendations toward explicit, maintainable solutions over clever complexity.

References

• references/playbook.md

• references/agent-source.md

• references/agent-source.md