Document Review Skill

Read first: references/documentation-contract.md — the split procedure, the functional-document exemption and the comment-block exemption list that a review of a feature document or a comment migration judges against (rules/docs-numbering.md and rules/docs-writing.md are its resident cores). If that Read fails, stop and report it; do not review from memory.

Trigger

• Keywords: review doc, document review, tech spec review, review-spec, doc-refactor, streamline doc

When NOT to Use

• Code review (use codex-code-review)
• Test coverage review (use test-review)
• Just want to read a document (use Read directly)

Commands

Workflow: /codex-review-doc

Target set → Deterministic checks → Resolve profiles + batches → Codex review per batch → Rating table + Gate → Loop

All changed .md in one change are one review plan. The plan is the unit; it holds one or more physical batches, and within the budget it is exactly one batch and therefore one dispatch. Reviewing file-by-file is what this workflow replaced — it multiplied a three-file change into three whole- document reviews.

Step 1: Determine the Target Set

Never narrow a multi-file change to one file, and never ask the user to pick one. A file the plan drops is a file nothing reviewed.

Step 2: Deterministic Checks First

node scripts/check-doc-links.js --root "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)" <changed .md paths>

Resolves the repo-local file links it can classify, prints the ones that do not resolve, and prints unresolved — how many link shapes it declined to classify. Heading fragments are out of scope: [x](#frag) is dropped uncounted the way an external URL is, and [x](./a.md#frag) is checked as a link to a.md alone. A dead #fragment is therefore not a finding this step establishes, and the reviewer is free to raise one.

Scan only the paths that exist in the working tree. A deleted .md (the resolver reports it deleted: true) is omitted from this scan — passing it produces an unreadable failure that hands the reviewer a defect when the deletion is the change. Its review copy is git show HEAD:<path>, and the prompt says so per file.

Bash(node:*) and Task are in allowed-tools since review-loop-resilience (2026-08-23): the fallback dispatch below names scripts/lib/review-dispatch.js and scripts/validate-family-sentinel.js as steps of this workflow, and a named step should not stall on a permission prompt mid-review. The earlier deliberate omission protected against unnamed node invocations riding a review's grant; the boundary is now behavioural — this workflow invokes node only for the scripts its steps name (the link check, the profile resolver, the dispatch decision, the sentinel validator, the state note). Advisory input, not a gate: it always exits 0, and its output is fed to the reviewer as findings already established so the LLM does not spend a pass rediscovering them. markdownlint does not resolve links, so nothing else answers this.

Pass both fields to the prompt, and never failures alone. It is a scanner, not a CommonMark parser — this repository ships zero dependencies — so failures: [] settles the link question only alongside unresolved: 0. With unresolved > 0 that many link shapes went unchecked, and saying "already settled" over them is the one way this advisory input can cost a review rather than save one.

Step 3: Resolve Profiles and Batches

node scripts/resolve-review-profile.js --tier <effective tier> --files <a.md,b.md> --root "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"

Emits a per-file profile with the reasons it is not shallower, plus the batch plan. Richer inputs — the ## sections a shallow profile is confined to, and whether code landed with the change — go in via --plan <file|->, a JSON document of the same shape the resolver prints:

{ "tier": "standard", "code_changed": false,
  "files": [ { "path": "docs/features/x/2-tech-spec.md",
               "profile": "living-sync", "sections": ["3. Design"] } ] }

Three things this step decides, and none of them is negotiable afterwards:

• The profile is resolved before the prompt is built. A shallow prompt for a change that did not earn one is never assembled, so there is no mismatch to detect afterwards and nothing to poison.
• Escalation is one-way and per file. One file escalating raises that file's questions and the batch's shared dimensions; it never withdraws another file's record-diff exemption.
• An over-budget plan splits loudly. Say which batches were produced and why, then dispatch each. Never claim one dispatch you did not make, and never drop a file to fit.

Step 4: Codex Review, One Dispatch Per Batch

First review: dispatch per @skills/codex-code-review/references/codex-transport.md § Start with the doc review prompt. See references/codex-prompt-doc.md.

Save the returned threadId — one per batch.

Loop review: dispatch per § Resume with the re-review template. See references/review-loop-doc.md — its Loop Rules carry the thread-rotation clause (central contract).

codex_fail → fallback carries the gate (adapter exit 1 only — @skills/codex-code-review/references/codex-transport.md § Completion state machine: a pending or unknown completion keeps the gate open with no fallback, exit 2 is a configuration error, and an alloc/cleanup failure is a lifecycle error) (@rules/auto-loop.md § Review Dispatch): decide via scripts/lib/review-dispatch.js (contract:'doc'), record [REVIEWER_FALLBACK] plane=doc_review from=codex to=contract-neutral-reviewer reason=<…> | <ISO8601> (sticky for this change), dispatch contract-neutral-reviewer via Task with references/codex-prompt-doc.md as the governing template — batch manifest, profiles and frozen file list included (P3 = one retry on a fresh instance) — and validate the raw report with node scripts/validate-family-sentinel.js doc before adopting the verdict (exactly one of ✅ Mergeable / ⛔ Needs revision, no foreign terminal). Fallback agents are stateless, so each loop round is a fresh dispatch. Carriers exhausted → no gate sentinel, behaviour-layer ⚠️ Need Human, nothing noted.

Stop cat-ing whole existing files into the prompt. Codex has sandbox access; the prompt carries the file list, each file's profile, and what that profile says to read.

Step 5: Consolidate Output

Organize results into rating table + severity-grouped findings + gate. One gate for the plan: a batch that comes back ⛔ Needs revision blocks the plan.

The conjunction is behaviour-layer, and the state slot cannot hold it. The reminder state (hook-lightweighting § 3.2) stores one doc_review note and a later note overwrites it — last write wins, whatever an earlier batch said. Hold the conjunction yourself: fix and re-dispatch every blocked batch (references/review-loop-doc.md § Loop Rules), and call the plan Mergeable only when the latest dispatch of every batch passed — never because the final dispatch happened to. Then self-note the plan's verdict once, not per batch:

CHECKER=".claude/scripts/review-state.js"; [ -f "$CHECKER" ] || CHECKER="scripts/review-state.js"
node "$CHECKER" note doc_review pass   # every batch's latest dispatch passed
node "$CHECKER" note doc_review fail   # any batch still blocked — increments the rounds count

The note is the declared-provenance record the reminder hooks read; it is advisory, binds to the current tree digest (a later .md edit re-opens the plane by construction), and a failed note never fails the review — the cost is one redundant reminder line.

Review Profiles

Resolved by scripts/resolve-review-profile.js, never chosen by hand at dispatch time.

New (untracked) files are read whole under any profile — every line is new.

The profile narrows what the reviewer reads, never whether review runs, and no resolver outcome auto-passes anything (Anchor Register #5, #6). Contract and escalation table: docs/features/doc-review-phasing/2-tech-spec.md § 3.3–3.4.

Review Dimensions

Review Loop

⚠️ @CLAUDE.md auto-loop: fix → re-review → ... → ✅ PASS ⚠️

⛔ Needs revision → fix 🔴 items → /codex-review-doc --continue <threadId> → repeat until ✅ Mergeable.

The round budget is the tier's cap (fast — docs are the tier's primary case — caps at 6; an explicit ## Max Rounds in rules/auto-loop-project.md overrides it, per rules/auto-loop.md § Tiers). Still failing at the cap → report blocker.

🔴 only. 🟡 and ⚪ are non-blocking: log them and proceed.

[NIT_DEFERRED] file:line | issue | reason: sub-threshold-doc | <ISO8601>

That tag and field order are a reporting convention — nothing parses or persists the line (hook-lightweighting § 3.3: the nit-history store retired with the hook that owned it). The durable record is the review report and the conversation, where the line is greppable; keep the fixed field order for exactly that grep. references/codex-prompt-doc.md asks Codex for a ### Deferred Findings section so the report itself carries the deferrals.

Do not batch-fix 🟡/⚪ and re-review to confirm — that spends a round on findings the gate already declared non-blocking. The two exceptions are the same as for code (@rules/auto-loop.md § Sub-Threshold Findings): a one-line fix in a file already open, and a mis-marked security / data-integrity issue that should have been 🔴.

What counts as 🔴 is pinned in references/codex-prompt-doc.md § Severity Calibration — it is the reviewer prompt, not this file, that keeps the loop short.

Verification

• Each issue tagged with severity (🔴/🟡/⚪)
• Gate is clear (✅ Mergeable / ⛔ Needs revision)
• Codex verified code-documentation consistency independently

Required Actions

References

• Doc review prompt: references/codex-prompt-doc.md
• Review loop: references/review-loop-doc.md
• Profile resolver: scripts/resolve-review-profile.js — profiles, escalation, batch plan
• Link checker: scripts/check-doc-links.js — advisory deterministic input. Reports failures and unresolved: it is a scanner, not a CommonMark parser, and failures: [] settles the link question only when unresolved is 0
• Standards: @rules/docs-writing.md

Examples

Input: /codex-review-doc docs/features/xxx/2-tech-spec.md
Action: Link check → resolve profile → Codex doc prompt scoped to the changed sections → Rating table + Findings + Gate

Input: /codex-review-doc
Action: Collect every changed .md → link check → one plan, one batch, one dispatch → Rating table + Gate

Input: /codex-review-doc (a 25-file feature folder)
Action: Resolver splits the plan loudly into batches, each within budget → one dispatch per batch → one consolidated gate

Input: Review this tech spec for me
Action: /review-spec → Check completeness/feasibility/risks → Output Gate

Input: This document is too long, streamline it
Action: /doc-refactor → Tabularize + Mermaid → Output comparison