agent-review

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:

1. Author self-audit — dogfood your own draft before committing. Invoked from agent-creator Phase 7.
2. External candidate adoption — gate before pulling a Mall agent or store agent into this brain.
3. 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].

Related

• skill-review — sibling for skills; canonical source of the shared five-gate contract
• agent-creator — inverts these gates into authoring phases
• instruction-review — sibling for instructions
• prompt-review — sibling for prompts
• system-prompt-skepticism — load-bearing for Gate 2 agent behavior
• act-pass — required for medium-stakes audits
• /review-agent prompt — slash-command entry point