Fresh Eyes Review

---
name: fresh-eyes-review
description: Fresh-eyes review of a changeset by a fresh-context agent — catches regressions and correctness issues the authoring context reads past.
disable-model-invocation: true
type: flow
license: MIT
metadata:
  version: "1.3"
---

# Fresh-eyes review

A context that produced a change reads its intent, not its text, so same-context review misses what
a fresh reader would catch. The fix is procedural: a reviewer whose context holds only the
artifacts.

## Workflow

1. **Resolve the inputs.** The changeset: whatever the invocation names — a branch, a commit, a
   diff range, a draft vs its original. Given none, infer it from the session — usually the work
   just finished, committed or not; no VCS required. With no session context to draw on, fall back
   to the current git diff; when that too yields nothing, ask the user what to review. Pin the
   changeset as concretely as the environment allows — a diff or commit range where one exists,
   otherwise the touched files, with their prior state when reconstructable. Alongside it, a short
   statement of what the change is supposed to achieve, when one exists (the task as stated, a PR
   or ticket description); when this session authored the change, never include the session's own
   reasoning, plan, or messages — leaked rationale recreates the blindness the fresh context
   exists to remove. Strip what the change deliberately leaves for later, whatever its source:
   naming it walls off the omissions lens below. Done when changeset and intent are pinned down
   and free of authoring context.
2. **Confirm the prompt.** Assemble the reviewer prompt — changeset, intent, the mandate and
   exclusions below, and any further reviewer instructions the invocation supplies (e.g. what to
   report back). When the invocation supplied changeset, intent, and mandate explicitly (e.g. a
   driving skill), nothing was inferred, so skip the confirmation and proceed. Otherwise show
   the prompt to the user verbatim and wait for approval; fold any doubt about an inferred
   changeset into the proposal rather than asking separately. Text emitted before a tool call may
   not be displayed, so never show the prompt and then ask via a question tool in the same turn —
   end the turn with the prompt and a plain-text ask, or embed the prompt in the question tool.
   Done when the user has approved the prompt, as shown or amended — or the explicit-inputs skip
   applied.
3. **Spawn one fresh-context reviewer** (a subagent or equivalent isolated session) with the
   prompt, free to read any surrounding project material — except the paths the prompt lists as
   excluded: any exclusions the invocation supplies, plus, when this session authored the change,
   session-authored files that are not part of it (plans, notes, scratch), since a fresh context
   cannot tell them apart. It writes nothing into the project: every run it makes (tests, probes)
   disables or redirects to scratch space its side outputs (coverage, reports, snapshots), which
   tooling writes in-tree by default. Its mandate, unless the invocation redirects it (e.g.
   security only):
   regressions and correctness, including contradictions with surrounding code, rules, or docs —
   though matching surrounding code is not correctness: verify any pattern the change extends or
   mirrors is itself sound, since completing a broken rollout inherits its breakage; ambiguities
   a reader without context would trip on; when an intent statement was given, whether the change
   does what it says; and omissions — what the change should have touched and didn't: an altered
   contract (file format, payload, schema, config or CLI surface) has counterparts that must move
   with it — templates, samples, fixtures, seed data, docs. Find those by content, not location:
   they often sit outside the changed tree and its stack, and a literal a changed file copies from
   a shipped artifact (a header row, a sample payload) names one. A deferral the submission itself
   states — a PR description or commit subject carried verbatim — is a claim to test, not scope
   conceded. Tough but grounded, aimed at mistakes that matter: every finding names its location
   and a concrete failure scenario; style nits, speculation, and padding are out of scope, and zero
   findings is a valid outcome. Out of scope bounds what is reported, never what is investigated: a
   pre-existing anomaly in the mechanism the change touches is a reason to audit it. If the harness
   cannot isolate a context, fall back to an adversarial pass over the same inputs in the main
   session. Done when an isolated reviewer has returned its findings, or the fallback pass ran and
   its result is flagged as same-context (weaker) — and the project, compared with its state
   before the review, holds nothing the review wrote: created files removed, modified ones reported.
4. **Report back.** Relay every finding intact — location and failure scenario included — plus
   whatever else the reviewer was instructed to return; add the session's own assessment when
   useful, but never silently drop or soften a finding. What to do with the findings is the
   caller's decision, not this skill's. Done when every reviewer finding appears in the report.