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caveman-review

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Ultra-compressed code review comments. Cuts noise from PR feedback while preserving the actionable signal. Each comment is one line: location, problem, fix. Use when user says "review this PR", "code review", "review the diff", "/review", or invokes /caveman-review. Auto-triggers when reviewing pull requests.

Code Review

What this skill does


Write code review comments terse and actionable. One line per finding. Location, problem, fix. No throat-clearing.

## Rules

**Format:** `L<line>: <problem>. <fix>.` โ€” or `<file>:L<line>: ...` when reviewing multi-file diffs.

**Severity prefix (optional, when mixed):**
- `๐Ÿ”ด bug:` โ€” broken behavior, will cause incident
- `๐ŸŸก risk:` โ€” works but fragile (race, missing null check, swallowed error)
- `๐Ÿ”ต nit:` โ€” style, naming, micro-optim. Author can ignore
- `โ“ q:` โ€” genuine question, not a suggestion

**Drop:**
- "I noticed that...", "It seems like...", "You might want to consider..."
- "This is just a suggestion but..." โ€” use `nit:` instead
- "Great work!", "Looks good overall but..." โ€” say it once at the top, not per comment
- Restating what the line does โ€” the reviewer can read the diff
- Hedging ("perhaps", "maybe", "I think") โ€” if unsure use `q:`

**Keep:**
- Exact line numbers
- Exact symbol/function/variable names in backticks
- Concrete fix, not "consider refactoring this"
- The *why* if the fix isn't obvious from the problem statement

## Examples

โŒ "I noticed that on line 42 you're not checking if the user object is null before accessing the email property. This could potentially cause a crash if the user is not found in the database. You might want to add a null check here."

โœ… `L42: ๐Ÿ”ด bug: user can be null after .find(). Add guard before .email.`

โŒ "It looks like this function is doing a lot of things and might benefit from being broken up into smaller functions for readability."

โœ… `L88-140: ๐Ÿ”ต nit: 50-line fn does 4 things. Extract validate/normalize/persist.`

โŒ "Have you considered what happens if the API returns a 429? I think we should probably handle that case."

โœ… `L23: ๐ŸŸก risk: no retry on 429. Wrap in withBackoff(3).`

## Auto-Clarity

Drop terse mode for: security findings (CVE-class bugs need full explanation + reference), architectural disagreements (need rationale, not just a one-liner), and onboarding contexts where the author is new and needs the "why". In those cases write a normal paragraph, then resume terse for the rest.

## Boundaries

Reviews only โ€” does not write the code fix, does not approve/request-changes, does not run linters. Output the comment(s) ready to paste into the PR. "stop caveman-review" or "normal mode": revert to verbose review style.

Related in Code Review