Sub-Skill: Review & Deployment Process

Purpose: Prevents deployment accidents and ensures reviews are more than rubber-stamping. Concrete checklists the agent runs through before every PR and deployment.

PR Review Checklist (Agent runs this before opening a PR)

Correctness

• All new functions have tests
• Existing tests pass (npm test / pytest / etc.)
• Edge cases covered: null/undefined, empty arrays, negative numbers
• No TODO comments without a linked ticket

Security

• No secrets or API keys in code (not even in comments)
• User input is validated before flowing into DB queries or shell commands
• New endpoints have authentication/authorization
• No eval(), exec(), or dynamic SQL strings without prepared statements

Performance

• No N+1 queries (database queries in loops)
• Large datasets are paginated, not loaded entirely
• New indexes for new WHERE clauses in queries

Maintainability

• Complex logic is commented (the why, not the what)
• No duplicated code blocks (DRY)
• Dependencies updated in package.json / requirements.txt

Deployment Checklist

Before Deployment

1. Check migrations: Are all DB migrations backward-compatible? (No DROP COLUMN without prior deprecation cycle)
2. Feature flags: New features behind a feature flag? Especially for large changes.
3. Rollback plan: How to roll back if something goes wrong? Documented?
4. Monitoring: Are alerts set up for new critical paths?

Deployment Order (for microservices)

1. First: Database migrations (additive changes)
2. Then: Backend services (new version)
3. Last: Frontend (new version)
4. Never: Frontend before backend when there are API changes

After Deployment

• Health check endpoint responds with 200
• Error rate in monitoring not elevated (observe for 5 minutes)
• Critical user flows manually tested (login, main feature, checkout)

Escalation Rules

Why This Sub-Skill Earns Stars

The agent never forgets security checks or deployment order. Every PR is reviewed as if a senior developer went through the checklist — automatically.