| name | agent-review |
| description | Audits a candidate agent (.agent.md) against five gates (spec compliance, content quality, scope fit, safety, currency & coherence) plus Gate 6 (tool allowlist minimality). Use when reviewing a new agent draft before commit, evaluating a Mall agent or store agent for adoption, or re-auditing existing agents on a periodic cadence. |
| lastReviewed | 2026-05-31T00:00:00.000Z |
Agent Review
Audit a candidate agent against the five-gate contract plus mandatory Gate 6 (Tool Allowlist Minimality). Agents are sub-process roles with their own tool capabilities — each tool granted is an attack/error surface, so the allowlist gate is mandatory for this type.
When to Use
Three fire contexts:
- Author self-audit — dogfood your own draft before committing. Invoked from agent-creator Phase 7.
- External candidate adoption — gate before pulling a Mall agent or store agent into this brain.
- Periodic re-audit — re-check existing agents on a cadence (e.g., quarterly retraining).
The shared gate model lives in skill-review/SKILL.md § The Five Gates. This file documents the agent-specific criteria for each gate plus the mandatory Gate 6 — Tool Allowlist Minimality.
A mechanical validator (e.g., a brain-qa script that ships with the heir) typically checks Gate 1 frontmatter compliance and the mechanical subset of Gate 5. Gates 2–6 are judgment-only.
The Five Gates + Gate 6
A candidate must pass all six to ship. Failure on any gate = decline or revise.
Gate 1 — Spec Compliance
| Check | Pass criterion |
|---|
| Frontmatter present | name + description + lastReviewed are required. Tool allowlist field (tools:) per current Microsoft Learn agent spec. VS Code agent-spec metadata fields are permitted: user-invocable, disable-model-invocation, model. Reject legacy / drift fields: type, application, tier, currency, inheritance, lifecycle. |
name valid | kebab-case, matches filename stem |
description valid | Third-person, ≤1024 chars, names the agent's role (what it is) AND when the parent should delegate to it. |
| Filename pattern | <kebab-name>.agent.md in .github/agents/ (flat — no subfolders) |
| Markdown lints clean | No broken links, no missing code-fence languages |
Gate 2 — Content Quality
| Check | Pass criterion |
|---|
| Clear role and mission | The body opens with what the agent is (one-line role) and what it does (mission statement). Not a procedure dump. |
| Boundaries explicit | A ## Boundaries or ## Out of scope section names what the agent will not do — guards against scope creep at delegation time. |
| Tool-usage guidance | If the agent uses tools, the body names which tools it prefers for which situations. Generic "use available tools" fails. |
| System-prompt skepticism applied | The agent's behavior treats its own instructions as hypotheses, not commands — per system-prompt-skepticism.instructions.md. |
Has ## Would Revise If | At least one falsifier per your heir's falsifiability-deadlines discipline. |
| ≤200 lines | Soft target. Agent bodies that exceed this usually contain skill-content that should be factored to a skill the agent calls. |
Gate 3 — Scope Fit
| Check | Pass criterion |
|---|
| Distinct from existing agents | Grep description: across .github/agents/ — if another agent covers the same role, extend that one. |
| Not a skill in disguise | Agents are subordinate execution contexts — sub-processes the parent delegates to. If the work could be done by the parent invoking a skill directly (no delegation needed), it's a skill, not an agent. |
| Serves a workflow not covered by skill+prompt | Delegation is justified when: (a) the work is parallelizable, (b) the work has its own context that shouldn't pollute the parent, or (c) the work has narrow tool needs that benefit from a tighter allowlist. |
| Lives in the right brain | Generic worker agents → heir baseline. Project-specific agents → that project's local-only repo. |
Gate 4 — Safety
Same criteria as skill-review § Gate 4. Agent-specific note: Gate 4 and Gate 6 overlap on tool safety — Gate 4 covers destructive-default avoidance in the prose; Gate 6 covers the allowlist.
Gate 5 — Currency & Coherence
Same criteria as skill-review § Gate 5. Agent-specific note: if the agent references skills/prompts it delegates work to, those references must resolve to live artifacts (semantic Gate 5).
Gate 6 — Tool Allowlist Minimality
Mandatory for all agents. Each tool the agent can call is an attack surface (prompt-injection risk) and an error surface (misuse risk).
| Check | Pass criterion |
|---|
| Each tool justified | The agent body names why each allowed tool is on the list. Generic "needs file access" fails; "reads existing markdown to insert diagrams" passes. |
| No destructive tools without explicit consent gate | If the agent has run_in_terminal or filesystem-write tools, the prose must require user confirmation before destructive operations (delete, force-push, drop). |
| No network tools unless justified | open_browser_page, fetch_webpage, MCP-network tools require explicit purpose in the body. Adds exfiltration surface. |
| Allowlist is the minimum, not the maximum | If the agent can complete its mission with read-only tools, don't grant write tools "just in case". |
Decision Matrix
| Gates passed | Action |
|---|
| All 6 | Accept — land the change |
| 5 of 6 | Revise — name the failing gate and patch the candidate |
| ≤4 of 6 | Decline — name the rationale; if the decline sets precedent, record it where your heir tracks framework-level decisions |
Recording the Verdict
For self-audits and routine re-audits: the verdict lives in the commit message or the conversation. No separate file.
For external adoption (Mall agent, store agent) or any decline that sets precedent: write a verdict capturing gate results, rationale, required changes (if Revise), and the act-pass trail. Agent audits always record the Gate 6 tool-allowlist analysis in the verdict, even on Accept. Store wherever your heir keeps audit decisions.
Anti-Patterns
| Anti-pattern | Correction |
|---|
| Accepting an agent with a "kitchen sink" tool allowlist | Gate 6 fail. Each tool must be justified. |
| Treating Gate 4 (safety prose) and Gate 6 (tool allowlist) as one check | They compose. Both must pass independently. |
| Letting an agent ship without explicit Boundaries section | Without scope boundaries, the parent delegates work that the agent can't or shouldn't do |
| Accepting an agent that duplicates a skill workflow | If no delegation justification (parallelizable / isolated context / tighter allowlist), it's a skill |
| Skipping Gate 3 dedup check on agents | The agents/ folder is small; overlap detection is cheap. Do it. |
Falsifiability
This skill's agent-specific criteria have failed if any of the following occur within 90 days:
- An accepted agent is reported as exceeding its scope or tool allowlist by 2+ heirs (criteria miscalibrated)
- Gate 6 declines cluster on a single tool class (e.g., always rejecting
run_in_terminal) and are reversed during re-audit (allowlist criterion too strict)
- An agent passes Gate 3 (distinct role) but later is identified as redundant with another agent ≥2 times in a quarter (dedup criterion too lax)
- A security incident (prompt injection, tool misuse) ships through an Accepted agent (Gate 6 criteria failed to prevent)
Track as you would any falsified discipline (commit log, retraining notes, or curation ledger if your repo ships one) tagged [AGENT-REVIEW-MISS].
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