Nemesis

Keep the same adversarial reviewer throughout the review loop, across all challenge-and-response turns. Release it when the review ends.

Pick the brief

The target picks the brief:

• A plan, design, or idea: NEMESIS_BRIEF.md.
• An implementation, such as a diff, branch, or PR: two passes, FIT_BRIEF.md then ECONOMY_BRIEF.md. Fit goes first: trimming a change that turns out to be the wrong one wastes the pass.

Read the target from the request and the conversation; a working-tree diff only supports that reading. An argument of design or implementation decides it outright, and fit or economy runs that one pass alone. When the target spans both, ask the user which. Name the brief to the user before the first challenge.

Start or resume

Start a fresh reviewer each time this skill is invoked. Within that run, reuse it, sending only changes and new evidence. Start a replacement if it has already closed. Otherwise, release it before starting a replacement when the user asks for a reset, the brief changes, or the topic changes enough that prior critique would bias the review. Give a fresh reviewer the conversation context and these instructions:

• The picked brief: how to challenge and close branches.
• NEMESIS_REPORT_FORMAT.md: response format and status markers. Read this before driving the loop below.

If the harness supports only one-shot subagents, carry the prior transcript into each new dispatch. Wait for critique before taking a step that depends on it; gather independent context while the reviewer works.

Drive the loop

1. Check the reviewer's status marker. If it is missing or invalid, ask the reviewer to restate the response with a valid marker before proceeding.
2. On [CONTINUE], answer the challenge with evidence: defend the choice, or change it and show the result. Read the code when it can settle the point. Send the answer to the same reviewer and repeat.
3. On [RESOLVED] or [STOPPED], end the loop and present the reviewer's closing summary, preserving the distinction between accepted risks and unreviewed or unresolved branches.
4. In a two-pass run, a [RESOLVED] fit pass starts the economy pass on the code as it now stands. A [STOPPED] fit pass ends the run.

If the user asks to stop, end the loop and summarize the current state.

Release reviewers

When the review completes, the user stops it, or an error ends the run, preserve the available findings and release every reviewer started by this run before presenting the final summary. Leave unrelated agents alone. Report cleanup failures in the summary.