deep-review

name

deep-review

description

Perform a maximally thorough, CodeRabbit-style code review that fans out one focused sub-agent per changed file, runs every available linter/SAST/secret scanner, and reports every issue down to nitpicks. Use when the user asks for a deep, exhaustive, thorough, or nitpick-level review, a CodeRabbit-style review, to "find everything", to "leave no stone unturned", or wants maximum coverage on a PR or branch. Optimizes for recall; some noise is acceptable. For a fast, conservative, senior-engineer review that flags only what matters, use code-review instead.

Deep Review

Review code like a relentless automated reviewer. Fan out a fresh, focused sub-agent for every changed file so no file inherits the leftover attention of a single pass, run every deterministic check available, resolve cross-file impact, and surface every finding from Critical down to Nitpick.

This skill optimizes for recall, not precision. Some noise is expected and acceptable. For a fast, low-noise review, use the code-review skill instead — deep-review is its thorough counterpart.

Use Cases

Exhaustively review PR #123 — find everything
/skill:deep-review https://github.com/OWNER/REPO/pull/123
CodeRabbit-style deep review of the current branch
Thorough review of this PR with inline comments
Nitpick-level review of these local changes, terminal only

Principles

• Recall over precision. 10–15+ findings on a non-trivial PR is normal and healthy. Under-reporting is the failure mode to avoid. Let severity tiers — not omission — communicate importance.
• Do nitpick. Naming, formatting not covered by a formatter, import order, magic values, doc/comment quality, and grammar are all in scope and belong in the Nitpick tier.
• Report low-severity findings individually. Never collapse, summarize, or count-away Low/Nitpick issues. Every finding gets its own entry.
• Fresh attention per file. Never rely on one holistic pass. Each changed file (or small batch) gets a dedicated sub-agent with the full checklist, so no file inherits "salience collapse" from earlier files.
• Run every available deterministic check. Linters, type-checkers, SAST, secret scanners, and prose linters are first-class inputs, not optional. Prefer one-shot runners (npx --yes, uvx) so "not installed" rarely means "skipped".
• Be specific and actionable. Thoroughness must not mean vagueness. Every finding includes the exact file/location, impact, and a concrete fix.
• Review only by default. Do not edit code unless the user explicitly asks you to fix the issues.
• Posting rules (same as code-review): A direct GitHub PR URL grants permission to post. PR numbers, branch reviews, file-only reviews, and local reviews are terminal-only unless the user explicitly asks to post. Any "do not post", "review only", or "terminal only" wording overrides everything.

Explicitly do NOT apply code-review's suppression rules here. Do not "summarize lower-severity patterns" and do not apply "if you would not block a real merge for it, do not mark it Medium or higher." Report everything; tier it honestly.

Workflow

Follow every phase for each review.

Phase 0: Establish Target & Output Destination

Determine the review target (a GitHub PR, the current branch vs a base, uncommitted changes, or a specific set of files) and the output destination.

Output destination rules (identical to code-review):

1. Direct GitHub PR URL (https://github.com/OWNER/REPO/pull/123) — post by default.
2. PR number or shorthand (PR #123) — terminal only unless the user asks to post.
3. Local branch, uncommitted, or file-only review — terminal only unless the user asks to post and provides a PR target.
4. Any "do not post" / "terminal only" wording — terminal only.

For a direct PR URL with posting enabled, the default posting style is CodeRabbit-style: inline review comments anchored to lines plus one summary comment. Resolve an inline flag: on by default for PR-URL posting; the user can request "summary only" (no inline) or "terminal only".

Phase 1: Gather the Diff & Build the Changed-File Manifest

For GitHub PRs, run gh auth status first, then gather metadata and diff:

gh pr view <url-or-number> --json title,body,author,baseRefName,headRefName,files,commits,url
gh pr diff <url-or-number>

For local branches:

git status --short
git branch --show-current
git merge-base HEAD origin/main 2>/dev/null || git merge-base HEAD main
git diff <merge-base>...HEAD --name-status
git diff <merge-base>...HEAD

Adjust the base branch if the repo's default is not main/master.

Build a changed-file manifest. For each changed file, record:

• path
• change_type (added / modified / deleted / renamed)
• language (from extension)
• hunk_ranges — the changed line ranges parsed from each @@ -a,b +c,d @@ header

Keep the hunk_ranges — Phase 7 reuses them to validate that inline comments land inside a diff hunk (GitHub rejects out-of-hunk inline lines).

Phase 2: Build the Repo-Context Packet

Read project standards in this priority order (highest first):

1. REVIEW.md in the target repo root
2. CLAUDE.md, .claude.md, or equivalent agent instructions
3. CONTRIBUTING.md, coding standards, architecture docs, ADRs
4. Package/tooling manifests (package.json, pyproject.toml, go.mod, Cargo.toml, …)
5. Nearby tests and similar implementations

Treat the target repo's REVIEW.md as the highest-priority rules.

Assemble one compact context packet to hand to every sub-agent (a cheap stand-in for whole-repo indexing):

• Standards digest — key rules extracted from REVIEW.md / CLAUDE.md / CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Stack summary — languages, frameworks, test runner, lint configs present.
• Conventions digest — naming, error-handling, and test patterns observed in nearby files.
• Symbol/caller index — for each exported or imported symbol touched by the diff, the grep-derived list of other files referencing it, so each per-file agent knows its blast radius. Build with read-only git grep scoped to symbols appearing in the diff.

Phase 3: Run the Tool Battery

Detect languages/file types from the manifest and run every matching available linter, type-checker, SAST scanner, secret scanner, and prose linter. See TOOL_BATTERY.md for the full detection-and-runner matrix and the install policy.

Policy summary:

• Prefer one-shot runners (npx --yes …, uvx …, docker run …). These are ephemeral and run without asking.
• Never run a global install (npm i -g, pip install, brew install, go install) without explicit permission. If declined, mark the tool skipped (not installed) in statistics and continue.
• Check mode only — never --fix / --write. This skill reviews; it does not edit.
• Scope runs to changed paths where the tool supports it.

Normalize every tool result into the shared finding shape (see REFERENCE.md): path, line, category, rule_id, message, source: <tool>.

Phase 4: Fan Out Per-File Review Sub-Agents

This is the structural core of the skill. Partition the manifest into review tasks and dispatch them.

Task split:

• One file = one task by default.
• Batch tiny files (each under ~40 changed lines) so one sub-agent handles up to ~5 files or ~400 total changed lines.
• Split any file with more than ~600 changed lines into multiple hunk-range tasks so no agent reviews more than it can hold with fresh attention. (Large means more agents, not fewer findings.)
• Skip lockfiles (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, poetry.lock, go.sum), pure deletions, and generated/vendored paths — no LLM agent (tools may still scan them).

Dispatch: run sub-agents (the Agent tool, read-only) in parallel waves of up to 5. Dispatch a wave, wait for it to return, dispatch the next, until the task list is exhausted.

Each sub-agent receives (assemble the prompt from SUBAGENT_PROMPT.md):

1. Its assigned file path(s) and changed line ranges.
2. The file's diff hunks.
3. The Phase 2 context packet.
4. Any Phase 3 tool findings already scoped to its file(s) — to confirm/expand, not miss.
5. The full category checklist (see below).
6. Anti-collapse instructions and the fixed output schema (both in SUBAGENT_PROMPT.md).

Phase 5: Aggregate, Ground & Dedupe

Collect all sub-agent findings plus all normalized tool findings into one list keyed by (path, line-range, category). Then:

1. Dedupe in three layers:
   • Exact/near-exact location + same category → keep the richer entry.
   • Tool-vs-LLM overlap (same defect, same place) → merge into one entry tagged confirmed-by-tool (raises confidence).
   • Same root cause reported from multiple call sites → merge with an "also affects" list.
2. Resolve cross-file context — for each finding carrying cross_file_refs, read/grep the referenced call sites to confirm impact. A changed signature that breaks an unseen caller becomes its own High finding.
3. Normalize severity — sub-agent severities are advisory; assign final tiers consistently across the whole report.
4. Order findings Critical → High → Medium → Low → Nitpick, then by file and line.
5. Count per-tier totals. Do not drop or summarize the Low/Nitpick tiers.

Phase 6: Self-Critique Re-Scan

Before producing output, run a structured re-scan (read-only):

1. Coverage matrix — build a (changed file) × (category) grid. Re-examine any empty cell for a substantial file ("file X produced zero findings — re-read it for tests, docs, nitpicks"; "no Security findings anywhere — re-scan auth/input/secret surfaces").
2. Tool reconciliation — confirm every tool that ran was folded in and listed in statistics; none silently dropped.
3. Cross-file completeness — confirm every cross_file_refs was resolved and every signature/contract change has a finding.
4. Count sanity check — on a non-trivial PR, a low total with a near-empty Nitpick tier signals under-reporting; re-run a targeted nitpick/docs/grammar pass over the largest changed files.

Merge any new findings through Phase 5's dedupe.

Phase 7: Output

Produce the terminal report (always) and, when posting is permitted, the GitHub output. See the Output Format and GitHub Posting sections below, with full templates in REFERENCE.md.

Category Checklist

Every sub-agent applies all of these. Categories 8–10 are exactly what code-review suppresses — here they are required.

1. Correctness — logic errors, wrong assumptions, off-by-one, broken edge cases, race conditions, bad state transitions, incorrect error propagation.
2. Security — auth/authz, injection, unsafe input, secrets, SSRF, XSS, unsafe deserialization, sensitive logging, insecure defaults.
3. Reliability — error handling, retries, idempotency, null/undefined handling, resource cleanup, timeouts, partial-failure behavior.
4. Data & API compatibility — migrations, schema changes, response-shape changes, backward compatibility, contract drift.
5. Tests — missing coverage for new logic, missing regression/edge-case tests, weak assertions, untested error paths, flaky patterns.
6. Performance — N+1 queries, hot-path regressions, unnecessary allocations/work, missing pagination/batching, sync work in async paths.
7. Maintainability — complexity, duplication, poor naming, inconsistency with project patterns, dead code, leaky abstractions.
8. Style / Nitpicks — naming conventions, formatting not auto-fixed, import ordering, magic values, redundant code, micro-clarity. Report individually.
9. Docs & comments — missing/stale doc comments on new public APIs, misleading comments, missing README/changelog updates when the project expects them.
10. Grammar & prose — typos and grammar in comments, log/error/UI strings, and markdown.

Severity Scale

• Critical — security vulnerability, data loss, production crash, auth bypass, major regression, leaked secret.
• High — logic bug, missing critical error handling, broken feature, serious performance issue, breaking API/contract change.
• Medium — missing test, maintainability risk, code smell likely to cause future bugs, minor behavior issue.
• Low — small clarity issue, local style/consistency problem, doc gap.
• Nitpick — purely cosmetic: naming preference, formatting, grammar/typo, micro-refactor suggestion.

Emit one entry per Low and per Nitpick finding. The statistics block must show the Nitpick count, and the report must list every Low/Nitpick item (collapsed for GitHub, never dropped).

Output Format

Start with a short overall assessment, then list findings highest to lowest severity (all tiers present). Use the per-finding format and closing blocks (PR Summary, Recommendations, Statistics) defined in REFERENCE.md. The statistics block must report files changed, sub-agents/waves run, issues per tier (incl. Nitpick), tools run with pass/fail/skipped, and the tool-confirmed count.

If no issues are found at any tier, say so clearly — but on a non-trivial PR treat that as a signal to re-run Phase 6 before concluding.

GitHub PR Posting

When posting is permitted, default to inline comments + a summary comment (see REFERENCE.md for exact commands and the JSON payload recipe).

1. Run gh auth status. On failure or gh missing, print the full review to terminal with the reason.
2. Summary comment — one comment with the overall assessment and statistics, each blocking/notable finding (Critical/High/Medium) in its own <details>, and a single outer collapsed 🪶 Nitpicks & minor issues <details> wrapping each Low/Nitpick finding individually.
3. Inline review — one review via gh api repos/OWNER/REPO/pulls/<n>/reviews with event=COMMENT and a comments array, each comment anchored to a line. Build the payload as JSON and post with gh api … --input <payload>. Validate each finding's line against the Phase 1 hunk ranges; demote any out-of-hunk finding into the summary comment. The review body repeats the summary + statistics so nothing is lost if a reader sees only the summary.
4. If the user asked for "summary only", post the summary comment alone. If posting fails, print the full review to terminal with the error.