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Productivity · Version 1.2.0 · Reviewed 2026-08-02

Review Guideline Template Designer

Turn engineering context into a reliable artifact for review rule authoring and guideline scope definition with evidence, explicit trade-offs, and a verification plan.

4 method steps 4 documented failure modes 4 diagnostic checks 7 quality gates

Creates testable review guidelines with path scope, violation mechanism, counterexamples, severity, and remediation evidence. It grounds the decision in source incidents, accepted fixes, relevant paths, reviewer feedback, and existing repository conventions and explicitly prevents vague best-practice prose generating inconsistent findings and flagging valid code that only looks unusual.

₹199 one-time

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What this skill helps you do

  • Review rule authoring
  • Guideline scope definition
  • Counterexample design

How Review Guideline Template Designer works

You provide

Repository access, entry points, and the target change

It inspects

Real execution path for review rule authoring, not naming

It decides

A guideline scope definition explanation with safe change seams

You verify

Claims confirmed against code paths or a test

What it checks first

Review Guideline Template Designer creates testable review guidelines with path scope, violation mechanism, counterexamples, severity, and remediation evidence. It grounds the decision in source incidents, accepted fixes, relevant paths, reviewer feedback, and existing repository conventions and explicitly prevents vague best-practice prose generating inconsistent findings and flagging valid code that only looks unusual. Use it when the work involves Review rule authoring, Guideline scope definition, Counterexample design.

  1. The entry points and the data flow between them, which is the fastest way to build an accurate mental model.
  2. Where behavior is actually decided, rather than where it appears to be configured.
  3. Which parts change frequently, since those carry the most current knowledge and the most risk.
  4. The seams where a change can be made safely without a wide blast radius.

Failure modes it recognizes

  • A mental model built from naming conventions that no longer match behavior.
  • Hidden coupling through global state, events, or reflection that static reading misses.
  • Dead code that appears authoritative and misleads the reader.
  • Documentation that describes an intended design the code no longer implements.

Answers it will reject

  • Explaining what code does line by line rather than what it is responsible for and why.
  • Trusting comments and documentation over the executing code path.
  • Recommending a refactor before the current behavior is understood and covered by tests.

Decision rules it applies

  • Trace one real request end to end before generalizing about the architecture.
  • Verify a claim about behavior against the code path or a test, and label unverified claims.
  • Identify the smallest safe change point rather than the theoretically correct structure.

Evidence it asks for

  • Follow a concrete input through the system and name each file and function it reaches.
  • Use call hierarchies and references rather than text search alone to establish coupling.
  • Confirm behavior with an executable test before changing it.

The method inside

  1. Map the artifact, actors, boundaries, and invariants relevant to review rule authoring.
  2. Trace concrete failure or abuse paths for guideline scope definition; do not report checklist items without a mechanism.
  3. Prioritize counterexample design findings by impact, likelihood, confidence, and cost of correction.
  4. Recommend the smallest defensible change, then define how an independent reviewer can verify it.

Deliverables

  • Review rule authoring assessment
  • Guideline scope definition decision and action plan
  • Counterexample design verification checklist

Evidence requirements

  • Source code, discussion, notes, or existing artifact
  • Audience, decision, and acceptance criteria
  • Repository conventions and constraints

Quality gates

  • Every material claim traces to supplied evidence or is labeled as a hypothesis.
  • The response follows the declared deliverable contract.
  • No execution, access, measurement, or verification is invented.
  • Secrets and personal data are redacted rather than repeated.
  • The user receives a concrete independent verification step.
  • The relevant failure modes in this domain were considered rather than only the reported symptom.
  • No listed anti-pattern was recommended as a solution.

Example task

Input

Apply the review guideline template designer to our current review rule authoring work. We need a concrete decision, bounded changes, and evidence that the result is correct.

Expected output

Start with source incidents, accepted fixes, relevant paths, reviewer feedback, and existing repository conventions. The highest-risk failure is vague best-practice prose generating inconsistent findings and flagging valid code that only looks unusual. Write each guideline as a falsifiable rule with violation and non-violation examples. Verify the result by evaluating the rule against historical changes and measuring false positives before enabling it.

Boundaries and compatibility

Ideal for

  • Review rule authoring: produce a decision or artifact grounded in supplied evidence.
  • Guideline scope definition: produce a decision or artifact grounded in supplied evidence.
  • Counterexample design: produce a decision or artifact grounded in supplied evidence.

Out of scope

  • Inventing repository behavior or decisions
  • Replacing review by the accountable owner

Agent compatibility

  • GitHub Copilot Agent Skills
  • Cursor Agent Skills
  • Claude Code Skills
  • OpenAI Codex Skills
  • JetBrains Junie Skills

Tool policy: Advisory by default. No tools are assumed. If the host provides tools, use read-only evidence gathering unless the user explicitly approves a scoped write or execution action.