Code Review

This skill enables an AI agent to conduct a structured, comprehensive code review on a source file, a set of changes, or a pull request. The agent examines the code across multiple quality dimensions — correctness, security, performance, readability, and maintainability — and produces a detailed review report with actionable feedback tied to specific lines of code.

Workflow

1. Parse the input and establish context. Determine whether the input is a single file, a directory, or a pull request diff. If it is a pull request, fetch the diff and identify the base branch so that only the changed lines are reviewed. Read any related configuration files (linter configs, style guides, type definitions) to calibrate the review against the project's standards.

2. Understand the intent of the change. Read commit messages, PR descriptions, and surrounding code to understand what the author intended. This prevents false positives — a reviewer must know the goal before judging whether the code achieves it. Summarize the change in one sentence before proceeding.

3. Check for correctness and bugs. Walk through every changed function and trace the data flow. Look for null or undefined dereferences, off-by-one errors, incorrect boolean logic, unhandled error paths, race conditions in concurrent code, and resource leaks (open files, database connections, unreleased locks). Verify that edge cases — empty inputs, maximum values, unexpected types — are handled.

4. Evaluate security. Scan for common vulnerability patterns: unsanitized user input (SQL injection, XSS), hardcoded secrets or credentials, insecure cryptographic usage, overly permissive file or network access, and missing authentication or authorization checks. Flag any dependency additions and check for known CVEs.

5. Assess performance and scalability. Identify algorithmic complexity issues (nested loops over large collections, repeated database queries inside loops, unbounded memory growth). Check for unnecessary allocations, missing caching opportunities, and blocking calls in async contexts. Consider the expected data volume and whether the code will scale.

6. Review readability and maintainability. Evaluate naming clarity, function length, code duplication (DRY violations), and adherence to the project's style guide. Check that public functions have docstrings or type annotations. Verify that magic numbers are replaced with named constants and that complex logic has explanatory comments.

Review Checklist