comments-audit

name	comments:audit
description	Audit code comments for AI slop: restatement, narration/decision-log, self-praise, docstring-scope, and section-divider banners. Audits a diff (the comments a change introduced) or a whole repo, ranks by intrinsic complexity, fans out judging agents, and applies the trims to a fresh branch. Use when asked to audit, trim, or clean up code comments, or as the comment pass of a branch-finishing flow. Not a general code review: skip it when the change added no comments.
argument-hint	[--all] [--base <ref>] [--mr <iid>] [--path <glob>] [--sort <key>] [--limit <n>] [--report] [--fix] [--format <template>] [--max-width <n>]
allowed-tools	["Bash","Read","Workflow"]

Comments Audit

Find low-value comments and act on them. A deterministic Shiki pass extracts comments over TextMate grammars, the scope selects which to judge, a fan-out of Claude Code agents judges each against the owner's comment model, and a deterministic applier writes the changes to a branch. The judge returns one of three actions per comment: keep (it earns its place), trim (it carries no fact, delete or shorten it), or rewrite (it carries a real fact under AI voice, strip the voice and keep the fact). A comment earns its place when it adds information not readily available in the adjacent code. See judge/prompt.md for the full model and carve-outs.

Model-invocable so ship can run it as its comment pass. The consent gate at Preflight caps the cost of a misfire at one cheap extraction.

The pipeline is three steps: preflight (extract, rank, build the job), the Workflow tool (judge), and apply (write the trims or report them).

Scope and Flags

Two scopes run the same pipeline. The flags select scope and narrow it:

• Default, --base <ref>, --mr <iid>: diff scope. Judges the comments a change introduced. Default is the working tree (staged plus unstaged). --base main is the merge-base with a ref. --mr <iid> is a GitLab merge request over glab.
• --all: repo scope. Judges every tracked code file's comments.
• --path <glob>: narrow either scope to matching paths. Repeatable. Prefer it on a first --all run on a large repo to cap the agent count.
• --sort lines|chars|score (default score): rank by intrinsic comment complexity so the longest, densest comments judge first.
• --limit <n>: keep only the top N ranked comments.

Both scopes exempt machine-meaningful comments deterministically: lint and compiler directives (eslint-disable, noqa, go:generate), shebang lines, and license headers never reach the judge.

• --fix: ask the judge for a concrete suggestion per finding.
• --report: at apply time, print findings instead of writing a branch.
• --format <template>: at apply time, pipe each edited file through a formatter before committing.
• --max-width <n>: at apply time, refuse a splice that would exceed n columns. Width goes unchecked when the flag is absent.

Preflight

Run from the repository you are auditing (the script resolves the git root itself, so stay in the target repo rather than cd-ing into the plugin):

bun <plugin-dir>/skills/audit/scripts/audit.ts preflight $ARGUMENTS

This extracts and ranks the comments, builds the judging job on disk, and prints a human summary (N comments / M files / ~K agents / ~T tokens) followed by a machine block:

<preflight>
{"scriptPath": "...", "argsPath": "...", "jobDir": "...", "count": N, "shardCount": K}
</preflight>

Read the <preflight> block. Present the count, file count, and rough token estimate to the user. Wait for the user to confirm before fanning out. Nothing runs until they do. A 5,000-comment repo is roughly 250 agents; --path and --limit cap that.

--all requires a clean working tree, because it reads the working tree but applies from HEAD. Commit or stash first if preflight reports a dirty tree.

Judge

On confirmation, read argsPath (it is JSON) and call the Workflow tool with the scriptPath from the preflight block and args set to the parsed contents of argsPath:

Workflow({ scriptPath: <scriptPath>, args: <parsed job-args.json> })

Each agent reads one shard, judges its comments, and writes verdicts to disk. The workflow logs a small summary (shard count and how many were flagged). The bulk verdicts stay on disk, off the conversation, for apply to read.

Apply

bun <plugin-dir>/skills/audit/scripts/audit.ts apply --job <jobDir> [--report] [--fix] [--format <template>] [--max-width <n>]

Default apply re-extracts the judged files and matches verdicts to comments by id at their current position, applies the trims and rewrites, and commits to a fresh comments/audit-<hash> branch off HEAD. The commit is built with git plumbing, so the working tree is never modified and the current branch stays checked out. A rewrite replaces the comment span in place with the de-voiced text, so the diff shows the cleaned comment. A partial trim carries the kept comment as rewritten text (trimTo) and is spliced the same way; a legacy line-range trim (trimToLines) that would strand a mid-sentence fragment is refused and listed for manual handling instead. A comment that moved or changed since preflight gets a new id, matches no verdict, and is skipped. Review the result with git diff HEAD..comments/audit-<hash>. Apply requires a clean working tree. The success message and --report both open with a N delete / M trim / K rewrite across F files split, counting only what auto-applies: a trim that keeps nothing is reported as delete, and refused verdicts appear as a , J to manual handling tail.

--report prints the findings grouped by file (path:line action category confidence rationale, with an old → new preview for each rewrite and a keep: preview for each partial trim) and writes nothing. Use it to review before applying, or on a dirty tree.

Formatting

The applier splices lines without running a formatter, which can leave debris a formatter would fix (a stray blank, a collapsed trailing comment past the line width). --format takes a shell command template: {} is replaced with the repo-relative path, the file's new content is piped on stdin, stdout is taken as the formatted content, and the command runs from the repo root. A non-zero exit warns and keeps the unformatted content. Examples:

--format 'ruff format --stdin-filename {} -'
--format 'prettier --stdin-filepath {}'

Pick the formatter from the target repo's own configuration and pass it explicitly, or omit the flag. NEVER guess at, auto-discover, or auto-execute a formatter the repo does not configure.

Without --format, --max-width is the only guard on wrapping. Set it to the limit the target repo already enforces (its formatter config, .editorconfig, or linter rule). Never invent one: a limit below the repo's real width refuses edits that would have been fine.

Manual Handling

Comments the applier cannot change safely are left in place and listed for manual handling:

• a comment interleaved with code;
• a trimToLines range that would drop a block's opening or closing delimiter, or whose kept line would open mid-sentence;
• a trimTo or rewrite whose text carries a comment form the site cannot host, such as // text replacing a /** */ block;
• a trimTo or rewrite at a comment whose own delimiters the applier does not recognize, such as Ruby's =begin/=end;
• a trimTo or rewrite that would produce a line past --max-width.

For a trimTo or rewrite, the applier reads the delimiters the comment already uses and re-emits them, so text that arrives as bare prose still splices as a valid comment at the right indentation. Doc-comment markers (/**, ///, //!) survive the round trip rather than decaying to their plain form.