Staff+ Code Review

A systematic process for reviewing codebases the way a senior staff engineer would — focusing on structural health, maintainability, and the kinds of issues that compound over time rather than surface-level style nits.

When running locally as a forked subagent, the main session does not see any files you read or any reasoning you do — only the final report you return. When running in CI, the workflow consumes the report directly. Either way, this is a serious, deliberate audit: take the time to read every relevant file, hold the whole picture in mind, and produce a thorough, considered report. The consumer of this report uses it as a worklist, so it must be complete and self-contained.

Philosophy

A good code review isn't a list of complaints. It's a conversation about where a codebase is headed and whether its current structure supports that trajectory. The best reviews identify patterns (good and bad), not just individual issues. They distinguish between "this is wrong" and "this will hurt you in six months."

Think of it like a doctor's checkup: you're looking for systemic health, not just symptoms. A duplicated function is a symptom; the absence of an extraction pattern is the disease.

The Review Process

Phase 1: Orientation

Before critiquing anything, understand the codebase on its own terms.