| name | third-lens-review |
| description | After Claude self-pitfall + Codex on a ship-worthy/architecture/RT/security/contract
change: run a third external model house (distant training distribution →
different blind spots) on the patched artifact, then adversarial synthesis.
|
Third-lens review
The third lens in superpowers-gstack's multi-lens review. Lenses 1–2 are Claude self-pitfall (pitfall-verification) and Codex (/codex review). This skill adds lens 3 — a different model house (different training distribution → different blind spots) reading the already-patched artifact (via OpenRouter for distant houses, or the codex CLI for the countersynthesis role) — followed by a mandatory adversarial synthesis.
Invoke with: /superpowers-gstack:third-lens-review
The governing principle (field-proven): cross-model agreement = high confidence; cross-model disagreement = where the value is. A third house finds architecture-level mistakes ("you never wired it together"), degraded-state bugs, and challenged core assumptions that two Western houses both took for granted — even after they already fixed 14 issues.
When to invoke (tiering)
Normally you do not invoke this skill by hand. pitfall-verification is a multi-model orchestrator and calls this skill automatically as Stage 3 of its chain for high-stakes changes — so the third house fires as part of the standard verification flow, with nothing extra to remember. Invoke it directly only for an ad-hoc third-house read outside that flow.
This is not for every change. The lens count scales with stakes, and each added lens must add a house or a role, never another generalist:
| Change | Lenses |
|---|
| Trivial (docs, typo, rename) | Claude self-pitfall only |
Ship-worthy (version bump / CHANGELOG / feat/fix/refactor / public contract) | Claude + Codex |
| Ship-worthy AND architecture / real-time / security / contracts / migration-logic | Claude + Codex + this skill (third house) |
If the change is not high-stakes, do not run this skill — it burns money and tokens for diminishing returns. The gate is owned by pitfall-verification's tier table; this row mirrors it.
Prerequisites
Model routing (which third lens, by artifact type)
The script picks the lens by --role. architecture and correctness run via OpenRouter (ids verified 2026-06-21); countersynthesis runs via the codex CLI (subscription):
--role | Model | House | Use when |
|---|
architecture (default) | z-ai/glm-5.2 | Zhipu | default 3rd lens — most distant distribution; OpenRouter |
correctness | deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro | DeepSeek | correctness sniper; OpenRouter |
countersynthesis | codex CLI | OpenAI | refutes Claude's dedup; via codex CLI (subscription, no per-call cost) |
The sensitive role and its fail-closed Western-infra guard were removed in 2.18.0 (work is not sensitive; default lens is GLM-5.2).
Reasoning models: GLM-5.2 and DeepSeek are reasoning models — they spend completion tokens thinking before answering. The script sends reasoning.effort (default medium; tune with --effort low|medium|high) and defaults --max-tokens to 16000 so reasoning does not exhaust the budget before the answer. If you see finish_reason=length / empty output, raise --max-tokens or lower --effort.
Cost guardrail: never use *-pro extended-reasoning tiers for routine review. At ~30k input tokens a run is well under $1; the default GLM run is ~$0.05. The only way to overspend is the wrong (extended-reasoning) model id.
Sequence
- Confirm lens 1–2 are done and the artifact is patched. If not, stop and finish them first.
- Pick the role from the table (artifact type →
--role).
- Run the script on the patched artifact:
python3 "$TLR" --files "src/**/*.swift" --role architecture
python3 "$TLR" --diff --diff-base main --role architecture
Tip: --dry-run first to see the cost estimate on a large artifact.
- Adversarial synthesis (Claude, mandatory). Never dump the raw output and stop. Run a synthesis over it — see below.
Step 4 — Adversarial synthesis (the part that makes the third lens worth it)
A third lens without synthesis is noise: a different-house model over-generalizes strictness (GLM especially), and its raw verdicts are not ship decisions. But the synthesis is itself an LLM-as-judge step, and LLM judges have a documented agreement bias (failure-detection rates as low as ~50%) — and here Claude is partly judging its own earlier findings. So the synthesis must be adversarial, not conciliatory:
- Default: every third-lens finding is REAL until you explicitly refute it with a reason. Do not drop a finding because it contradicts your earlier analysis — that is exactly the bias to fight.
- Log each dropped finding with why (over-strict for this domain? already handled at file:line? factually wrong?). A silent drop is indistinguishable from a missed bug.
- Treat disagreement as the signal. Every cross-model disagreement must end in an explicit, reasoned decision — not a smoothed-over average. (Field example: GLM's wrong "sample-accurate crossfade" finding forced the precise rule no lens had stated — MIDI delivery needs sample precision; fade-envelope tolerates 20–50 ms. The over-strict finding was the trigger for the right call.)
- Agreement across houses = high-confidence green. Where all lenses agree, no action needed; note it.
- For the biggest changes only (arch/RT/security): run a
--role countersynthesis pass (via the codex CLI, subscription — no per-call cost) that refutes Claude's dedup decisions. Cheap insurance against bias bortrasjonalisering of a real finding.
Synthesis output format
Third-lens synthesis (model: <id>, role: <role>):
CONFIRMED (fix now):
- [P1/P2] <finding> — <file:line> → <fix>. Refutation attempted, survived because <why>.
DISAGREEMENT → DECISION:
- <finding> — lens says X, our view is Y → DECISION: <explicit reasoned call>.
DROPPED (with reason):
- <finding> → dropped because <over-strict for domain | handled at file:line | factually wrong>.
CROSS-HOUSE AGREEMENT (high confidence, no action):
- <area all lenses agreed was sound>
Lens(es) run: Claude self-pitfall + Codex + <model id>[ + countersynthesis]
Cost: $<from script footer>
Verdict: CLEAN | FIX-THEN-RECHECK | SURFACE-TO-USER
Always present the raw output's key findings and the synthesis. Never the raw dump alone.
What this skill is NOT
- Not for trivial or standard changes — tiering gates it. Running three houses on a typo is waste.
- Not a replacement for
pitfall-verification or /codex — it is the third lens, after both.
- Not autonomous: the script fetches the lens; the agent owns the adversarial synthesis and the ship decision.
Why a third lens (field evidence)
LiveSet Pro (2026-06-21): GLM-5.2 ran as lens 3 after Claude + Codex had already fixed 14 issues, and still found real new value — dead code the tested core was never wired into, a use-after-free under render, a silently-dropped scheduler overflow, a leaked late-arriving audio unit. Each lens caught what the other two missed; none was redundant. The mechanism is training-distribution distance, not raw model IQ — which is why the third lens is a different house, and why GLM (≈18 pts below Fable 5 on SWE-bench Pro) earns its place: it is the cheapest, most distribution-distant, whole-repo-in-context divergence finder available, and its over-strictness becomes useful friction once the synthesis is adversarial.
