review

name	review
description	Validate plans, execution, or PRs against wish criteria — returns SHIP / FIX-FIRST / BLOCKED with severity-tagged gaps.

/review — Universal Review Gate

Validate any artifact against its wish criteria. Dispatch as a subagent — never review your own work inline.

Context Injection

This skill receives its scope from the dispatch layer:

• Target — what is being reviewed (wish draft, completed work, or PR diff)
• Wish path — .genie/wishes/<slug>/WISH.md in the shared worktree
• Injected criteria — acceptance criteria extracted from the wish

If context is injected, use it directly. Do not re-parse for information already provided.

When to Use

• Before /work — validate a wish plan is ready for execution
• After /work — verify implementation meets acceptance criteria
• Before merge — check a PR diff against wish scope

Flow

1. Detect target — determine what is being reviewed (wish draft, completed work, or PR diff).
2. Select pipeline — match target to Plan, Execution, or PR checklist below.
3. Run checklist — evaluate each criterion, collecting evidence.
4. Run validations — execute any validation commands; capture pass/fail output.
5. Tag gaps — classify every unmet criterion by severity.
6. Return verdict — one of SHIP, FIX-FIRST, or BLOCKED (see Verdicts).
7. Write next steps — exact fixes, files, and commands for each gap.

Council Participation

When a council team is active, the review can incorporate council perspectives:

• Post review findings to team chat for council input via genie chat post --team <team>
• Council members may surface risks or blind spots missed by the standard checklist
• Council input is advisory — the verdict is still determined by the checklist

Pipelines

Plan Review (before /work)

• Problem statement is one sentence and testable
• Scope IN has concrete deliverables
• Scope OUT is explicit — boundaries stated
• Every task has testable acceptance criteria
• Tasks are bite-sized and independently shippable
• Dependencies tagged (depends-on / blocks)
• Validation commands exist for each execution group

Execution Review (after /work)

• All acceptance criteria met with evidence
• Validation commands run and passing
• No scope creep — only wish-scoped changes
• Work is auditable — commands and outcomes captured
• Quality pass: security, maintainability, correctness
• No regressions introduced

PR Review (before merge)

• Diff matches wish scope — no unrelated changes
• File list matches wish's "Files to Create/Modify"
• No secrets, credentials, or hardcoded tokens in diff
• Tests pass (if applicable)
• Commit messages reference wish slug

Severity & Verdicts

Severity	Meaning	Blocks?
CRITICAL	Security flaw, data loss, crash	Yes
HIGH	Bug, major perf issue	Yes
MEDIUM	Code smell, minor issue	No
LOW	Style, naming preference	No

Verdict	Condition	Next step
SHIP	Zero CRITICAL/HIGH gaps, validations pass	See SHIP Next-Steps below
FIX-FIRST	Any CRITICAL/HIGH gap or failing validation	Auto-invoke /fix
BLOCKED	Scope or architecture issue requiring wish revision	Escalate to human

SHIP Next-Steps (context-dependent)

Review Context	On SHIP
Plan review (after /brainstorm)	Proceed to /wish to create executable plan
Plan review (after /wish)	Proceed to /work to execute the plan
Execution review (after /work)	Create PR targeting dev
PR review (before merge)	Merge to dev (agents) or approve for human merge

Auto-Invocation on FIX-FIRST

When the verdict is FIX-FIRST:

1. Auto-invoke /fix with the severity-tagged gap list.
2. After /fix completes, re-run /review (max 2 fix loops).
3. If still FIX-FIRST after 2 loops, escalate as BLOCKED.

Unclear Root Cause

When a failure is found but the root cause is unclear:

• Invoke /trace to investigate before dispatching /fix.
• /trace produces a diagnosis report; /fix uses it to apply the correction.

Dispatch

The reviewer must not be the engineer. Always dispatch review as a separate subagent.

# Spawn a reviewer subagent
genie agent spawn reviewer

Task Lifecycle Integration (v4)

When a PG task exists for the reviewed work, log the verdict as a task comment:

Verdict	Task Action
SHIP	genie task comment #<seq> "SHIP — all criteria passed"
FIX-FIRST	genie task comment #<seq> "FIX-FIRST: [gap list]" then genie task move #<seq> --to build
BLOCKED	genie task block #<seq> --reason "<reason>"

Graceful degradation: If no PG task exists for the reviewed work, skip all genie task commands. Verdict logging is an enhancement — the review flow must never fail due to missing tasks.

Example

After /work completes wish fix-dispatch-initial-prompt, the orchestrator dispatches /review:

genie agent spawn reviewer
genie agent send 'Review wish fix-dispatch-initial-prompt execution. Criteria:
1. initialPrompt added to all 5 dispatch call sites
2. protocolRouter.sendMessage kept as backup with warning logging
3. bun test passes
4. bun run typecheck clean
Check: gh pr diff 746, then run validations.' --to reviewer

Reviewer output:

## Review: fix-dispatch-initial-prompt (Execution)

### Checklist
- [x] All acceptance criteria met — 5/5 call sites have initialPrompt
- [x] Validation: bun test — 1137 pass, 0 fail
- [x] Validation: bun run typecheck — clean
- [x] No scope creep — only dispatch.ts and team.ts modified
- [x] No regressions — test count unchanged

### Gaps
(none)

### Verdict: SHIP
Next: create PR targeting dev

Rules

• Never mark PASS without evidence — verify, don't assume.
• Never ship with CRITICAL or HIGH gaps.
• Never implement fixes during review — hand off to /fix.
• Every FAIL includes actionable fix (file, command, what to change).
• Keep output concise, severity-ordered, and executable.

Turn close (required)

Every session MUST end by writing a terminal outcome to the turn-session contract. This is how the orchestrator reconciles executor state — skipping it leaves the row open and blocks auto-resume.

• genie done — work completed, acceptance criteria met
• genie blocked --reason "<why>" — stuck, needs human input or an unblocking signal
• genie failed --reason "<why>" — aborted, irrecoverable error, or cannot proceed

Rules:

• Call exactly one close verb as the last action of the session.
• blocked / failed require --reason.
• genie done inside an agent session (GENIE_AGENT_NAME set) closes the current executor; it does not require a wish ref.