| name | no-self-approve |
| description | Never cast an approving review on a PR your own (shared) agent identity authored — approval must come from an independent reviewer. |
| triggers | ["before voting / approving on a PR","reviewer or judge about to approve"] |
| allowed-tools | Bash Read Grep Glob |
no-self-approve (principles 9, 10)
Harness agents often authenticate with one shared bot identity. Casting an approve on a PR
that identity authored — including any harness-created PR on an agent/<id>/… branch — is a
self-approval: invalid, because approval must come from an independent reviewer (another agent on
the same identity cannot supply it either).
Rules
- Always post your review comments / findings — that work is valuable regardless of who authored
the PR.
- Never cast an approving vote (
approve / approve-with-suggestions) on a PR authored by your
own identity. If your verdict is "approve" but you authored it, abstain and note that
independent approval is required.
- Negative verdicts (request changes / reject) on your own PR are fine — you may always ask for
changes to your own work.
How to check before approving
- Compare the PR author to your own identity. For GitHub:
gh pr view <pr> --json author -q .author.login vs gh api user -q .login.
- If they match (or the branch is an
agent/… branch you produced), do not approve — abstain.
- Prefer a deterministic
pre_merge gate that rejects approver == author, so a slip can never
merge. This skill is wired into pre_merge in the state machine.
