| name | team-branch-review |
| description | Comprehensive branch review using a parallel agent team with Codex validation. Use when reviewing all commits on a branch before creating a PR, especially for large or complex branches that benefit from multi-perspective review. Trigger on "review my branch", "check before I PR", "full code review", "pre-PR review", "team review", or "review before merge". |
| argument-hint | [--epic <EPIC_ID>] [optional extra instructions] |
Team Branch Review
Comprehensive code review of all commits on the current branch compared to main. Spawns a team of parallel Claude (Opus) reviewers - each specializing in a different review concern. Each reviewer independently validates their own findings using the Codex MCP, then the lead synthesizes the final report.
Context
- Working directory: !
pwd
- Current branch: !
git branch --show-current
- Base commit: !
git merge-base HEAD origin/main 2>/dev/null || git merge-base HEAD main 2>/dev/null || echo "main"
Instructions
You are the team lead conducting a comprehensive multi-agent code review.
CRITICAL: You MUST use TeamCreate to create an agent team and the Task tool (with team_name parameter) to spawn Claude reviewer agents. Each reviewer is an independent Claude agent session, NOT a Codex MCP call. Do NOT substitute direct mcp__codex__codex calls for agent teammates. The Codex MCP is used only BY the reviewer agents internally to validate their own findings - you (the lead) do not call Codex directly.
This skill does NOT edit files. It produces a review report only.
You will:
- Spawn a team of Claude (Opus) reviewer agents using TeamCreate and the Task tool
- Each reviewer explores the code deeply and validates their findings with Codex MCP
- You collect all validated findings and synthesize the final report
Phase 0: Precondition Check
Before doing anything else, verify you have the required tools:
-
Check for the Task tool (subagent spawner). This is the tool that launches new agent sessions with parameters like subagent_type, team_name, name, model, and prompt. Look at your available tools - if you do not have a tool called "Task" that spawns subagents, STOP IMMEDIATELY and tell the user:
"This skill requires the Task tool (subagent spawner) which is not available in custom agent sessions (claude --agent). Run this skill from a plain claude session instead."
Do NOT attempt workarounds (CLI commands, direct Codex calls, single-agent review). Just stop.
-
Check for the TeamCreate tool. If not available, stop and tell the user:
"Agent teams are required for this skill. Enable them by setting CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1 in your Claude Code settings, then retry."
Do NOT proceed past this phase unless both tools are confirmed available.
Phase 1: Analyze Branch Scope
Substitute BASE_COMMIT from Context above, then run these git commands:
git diff --shortstat BASE_COMMIT..HEAD
git log --oneline BASE_COMMIT..HEAD
git diff --stat BASE_COMMIT..HEAD
Look up PR description (if one exists for this branch):
gh pr view --json title,body --jq '"## " + .title + "\n\n" + .body' 2>/dev/null
If a PR exists, save the output as pr_context. If the command fails (no PR exists), set pr_context to empty string.
Parse arguments and resolve epic: Check if $ARGUMENTS begins with --epic <EPIC_ID>. If so, extract the ID and strip the flag (and its value) from the remaining arguments. Then follow ~/.claude/skills/shared/planning-context.md to produce planning_context — the rendered block substituted into the reviewer prompt's PLANNING_CONTEXT placeholder. If no --epic was passed, that procedure falls back to parsing the branch name and finally to the "no linked planning context" string. Do not stop the pipeline if resolution fails — the fallback is valid output.
Record:
- lines_changed: Total lines added + removed
- files_changed: List of all changed file paths
- commit_count: Number of commits
- base_commit: The exact commit hash (use this everywhere, not "main")
- pr_context: The PR title and body if a PR exists, otherwise empty
- planning_context: The rendered block from the planning-context loader
- team_name: Compute a unique team name: take the branch name, replace
/ with -, truncate to 30 chars, then prefix with review- and append - plus the first 6 chars of HEAD's commit hash. Example: branch feat/add-auth at commit a1b2c3d becomes review-feat-add-auth-a1b2c3. Use this value everywhere a team_name is needed.
Phase 2: Determine Team Composition
Based on lines_changed:
Small (< 200 lines) - 2 reviewers:
| Name | Focus |
|---|
reviewer-security | Security, correctness, logic errors, edge cases, input validation |
reviewer-pragmatism | Architecture, code quality, unnecessary complexity, premature abstraction, YAGNI, over-engineering, locality of behavior |
Medium (200-1000 lines) - 4 reviewers:
| Name | Focus |
|---|
reviewer-security | Vulnerabilities, injection, auth gaps, input validation, data exposure |
reviewer-correctness | Logic errors, off-by-one, nil dereferences, concurrency, edge cases |
reviewer-architecture | Design patterns, abstraction, coupling, API design, modularity |
reviewer-simplicity | Over-engineering, premature abstraction, YAGNI, unnecessary complexity, locality of behavior, Chesterton's Fence |
Large (1000+ lines) - 6 reviewers:
| Name | Focus |
|---|
reviewer-security | Vulnerabilities, injection, auth gaps, input validation, data exposure |
reviewer-correctness | Logic errors, off-by-one, nil dereferences, race conditions |
reviewer-architecture | Design patterns, coupling, API design, modularity |
reviewer-simplicity | Over-engineering, premature abstraction, YAGNI, unnecessary complexity, locality of behavior, Chesterton's Fence |
reviewer-performance | Allocations, N+1 queries, resource leaks, algorithmic complexity |
reviewer-testing | Coverage gaps, testability, missing test cases, test quality |
Phase 3: Spawn Team and Reviewer Agents
-
Create the team:
TeamCreate(team_name: "TEAM_NAME", description: "Branch review of BRANCH_NAME")
-
Create temp directory for reviewer findings:
mkdir -p /tmp/review-TEAM_NAME
-
Load templates and reviewer briefs. Before spawning, read the following files using the Read tool:
Prompt templates (from ~/.claude/skills/team-branch-review/templates/):
templates/reviewer-prompt.md - The prompt template for reviewer agents (used in step 4 below)templates/final-report.md - The report format for Phase 5 synthesis (read now, use later)
Reviewer briefs (from ~/.claude/skills/shared/reviewers/):
| Reviewer name | Brief file |
|---|
reviewer-security | ~/.claude/skills/shared/reviewers/security.md |
reviewer-correctness | ~/.claude/skills/shared/reviewers/correctness.md |
reviewer-architecture | ~/.claude/skills/shared/reviewers/architecture.md |
reviewer-simplicity | ~/.claude/skills/shared/reviewers/simplicity.md |
reviewer-pragmatism | ~/.claude/skills/shared/reviewers/pragmatism.md |
reviewer-performance | ~/.claude/skills/shared/reviewers/performance.md |
reviewer-testing | ~/.claude/skills/shared/reviewers/testing.md |
Read ALL relevant brief files and both template files.
-
Spawn ALL reviewers in parallel (send all Task calls in a single message):
For each reviewer, take the loaded reviewer prompt template and substitute all placeholders, then pass the result as the Task prompt:
Task(
subagent_type: "general-purpose",
team_name: "TEAM_NAME",
name: "reviewer-security",
description: "Security review",
prompt: "[reviewer-prompt.md with all placeholders substituted]"
)
Repeat for each reviewer. All spawns happen simultaneously.
Reviewer Prompt Template
Each reviewer receives the prompt from ~/.claude/skills/team-branch-review/templates/reviewer-prompt.md (loaded in Phase 3, step 3).
Substitute these placeholders before passing to each reviewer:
| Placeholder | Value |
|---|
| FOCUS_AREA | The reviewer's specialization name |
| FOCUS_DESCRIPTION | One-line description of their focus |
| FOCUS_BRIEF | Full content from the reviewer's brief file |
| BRANCH_NAME | Current branch name |
| BASE_COMMIT | Exact commit hash from Phase 1 |
| FILE_LIST | All changed file paths, one per line |
| CWD | Working directory |
| TEAM_NAME | The team name computed in Phase 1 (used for findings file path) |
| REVIEWER_NAME | The reviewer's name, e.g. reviewer-security (used for findings file path) |
| PR_CONTEXT | The PR title and body from pr_context if available, otherwise the literal string "No PR description available." |
| PLANNING_CONTEXT | The rendered planning_context block from Phase 1 (falls back to "No linked planning context available — reviewing against general code-quality heuristics only." when no epic resolved) |
| TEAM_ROSTER | List of all OTHER reviewers (omit current). Format each as: - reviewer-name: Focus description |
Phase 4: Wait for All Reviewers to Complete
Wait for each reviewer to go idle (indicating they finished their work). Do NOT poll for findings files using bash loops with sleep - this violates the monitoring rule in ~/.claude/rules/monitoring.md.
Teammates send idle notifications automatically when their turn ends. As each reviewer goes idle, check if their findings file exists at /tmp/review-TEAM_NAME/{reviewer-name}.md. Once all expected files exist, read each one and compile all findings into a single list tagged by reviewer.
If a reviewer goes idle but did not produce a findings file, note the gap in the final report and proceed with available findings.
Phase 5: Synthesize Final Report
You (the lead) produce the final report directly using the findings read from /tmp/review-TEAM_NAME/ files in Phase 4. Deduplicate findings caught by multiple reviewers (note cross-references). Resolve conflicts by favoring the position with stronger code evidence.
Use the report format from ~/.claude/skills/team-branch-review/templates/final-report.md (loaded in Phase 3, step 3). Substitute BRANCH_NAME and fill in all sections with the compiled findings.
Phase 6: Cleanup
-
Shut down all reviewers: Send a shutdown request to each reviewer agent:
SendMessage(to: "reviewer-NAME", message: {type: "shutdown_request"})
Send all shutdown requests in a single message (parallel). Then wait for the teammate_terminated system notifications before proceeding. Do NOT call TeamDelete until all agents have terminated.
-
TeamDelete() - clean up the agent team (only after all agents terminated)
-
rm -rf /tmp/review-TEAM_NAME - remove temp findings directory
Error Handling
| Scenario | Recovery |
|---|
| Reviewer agent fails or times out | Note the gap in the report, continue with remaining findings |
| Codex MCP unavailable for a reviewer | Reviewer reports unvalidated findings, noted in report |
| Team spawn fails | Fall back to single-agent review (run codex-branch-review instead) |
| No findings from any reviewer | Report "APPROVED - no issues found" with note about review coverage |
Guidelines
- Model inheritance: Do NOT set a
model parameter on spawned agents - they inherit the global model setting automatically
- Parallel execution: Spawn ALL reviewer agents simultaneously in one message
- Fixed base commit: Use the exact hash from Phase 1 everywhere, never "main"
- Distributed Codex validation: Each reviewer calls Codex MCP to validate their own findings (runs in parallel)
- Don't embed diffs in prompts: Let agents and Codex gather diffs via git commands themselves
- Deep exploration: Reviewers should use Read, Grep, Glob extensively - not just skim diffs
- No severity inflation: Findings should use honest, appropriate severity levels
- Phase 4 is a hard gate: Do NOT write the report until all reviewer findings files exist. This is non-negotiable.
- Findings come from files: Reviewers write findings to
/tmp/review-TEAM_NAME/. Do not use message content as findings.
Next Steps
After presenting the report, if the outcome is NEEDS REVISION or MANUAL REVIEW REQUIRED, add this note:
Next steps:
/team-branch-fix - Implement fixes for these findings. Choose which to fix, then agents implement changes in parallel./team-branch-comment - Post findings as PR review comments on specific lines. Choose which findings to comment on, then comments are posted via GitHub API.
$ARGUMENTS
