| name | hostile-reviewer |
| description | Adversarial code review that iterates to convergence. Use when the user says "hostile review", "adversarial review", "tear this apart", "find all issues", or needs a thorough skeptical review of code or design. |
Hostile Reviewer
Use this skill for adversarial code review when you need to find issues that a normal review would miss. The goal is to act as a skeptical, thorough reviewer who assumes nothing is correct until proven otherwise.
Purpose
Perform a deep adversarial review of code changes or design documents. A single review pass catches roughly 60% of issues — fixes from pass N routinely introduce 2-4 new issues caught in pass N+1. This skill iterates to convergence to eliminate that false-completeness problem.
Prerequisites
- A PR diff, set of changed files, or a design document to review
- Willingness to iterate (this skill does not rubber-stamp)
Workflow
-
Adopt the adversarial stance.
Assume every change has a hidden defect. Focus on: invariant gaps, integration boundary failures, missing error handling, race conditions, and untested edge cases. No praise, no qualifiers — findings only.
-
Review with severity classification.
For each finding, assign one severity:
- CRITICAL — Security flaws, data loss, architectural redesign required.
- MAJOR — Performance issues, missing error handling, incomplete tests.
- MINOR — Code quality, documentation gaps, edge cases.
- NIT — Formatting, naming, minor refactoring suggestions.
-
Report findings with evidence.
Each finding must include: file path, what is wrong, why it matters, and what to change (three sentences max per finding). No vague observations — every finding must be actionable.
-
Iterate to convergence.
After findings are addressed, re-review the updated code. A "clean pass" means no findings above NIT severity. Require two consecutive clean passes before declaring the review complete. Cap at 10 passes.
-
Produce the final verdict.
clean — Two consecutive clean passes achieved. Code is stable.risks_noted — MAJOR findings exist but are addressable.blocking_issue — CRITICAL findings remain. Must fix before merge.
Expected Output Format
A structured review with:
- Findings grouped by severity (CRITICAL first)
- Each finding: file, issue, impact, fix (three sentences max)
- Iteration summary: pass count, findings per pass, convergence status
- Final verdict
Quality Checklist
