Skills

Skill 7 of 15

Requesting Code Review

Use when completing tasks, implementing major features, or before merging to verify work meets requirements

1 minute · 255 words · 5 sections

Install

$ npx skills add obra/superpowers --skill requesting-code-review

$ npx skills add obra/superpowers

» /plugin marketplace add obra/superpowers

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

Dispatch a code reviewer subagent to catch issues before they cascade. The reviewer gets precisely crafted context for evaluation — never your session’s history.

Core principle: Review early, review often.

When to Request Review

Mandatory:

After each task in subagent-driven development
After completing major feature
Before merge to main

Optional but valuable:

When stuck (fresh perspective)
Before refactoring (baseline check)
After fixing complex bug

How to Request

1. Get git SHAs:

BASE_SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD~1)  # or: git merge-base origin/main HEAD
HEAD_SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD)

2. Dispatch code reviewer subagent:

Dispatch a general-purpose subagent, filling the template at code-reviewer.md (opens in a new tab)

Placeholders:

{DESCRIPTION} - Brief summary of what you built
{PLAN_OR_REQUIREMENTS} - What it should do
{BASE_SHA} - Starting commit
{HEAD_SHA} - Ending commit

3. Act on feedback:

Fix Critical issues immediately
Fix Important issues before proceeding
Note Minor issues for later
Push back if reviewer is wrong (with reasoning)

Example

[Just completed Task 2: Add verification function]

You: Let me request code review before proceeding.

BASE_SHA=$(git log --oneline | grep "Task 1" | head -1 | awk '{print $1}')
HEAD_SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD)

[Dispatch code reviewer subagent]
  DESCRIPTION: Added verifyIndex() and repairIndex() with 4 issue types
  PLAN_OR_REQUIREMENTS: Task 2 from docs/superpowers/plans/deployment-plan.md
  BASE_SHA: a7981ec
  HEAD_SHA: 3df7661

[Subagent returns]:
  Strengths: Clean architecture, real tests
  Issues:
    Important: Missing progress indicators
    Minor: Magic number (100) for reporting interval
  Assessment: Ready to proceed

You: [Fix progress indicators]
[Continue to Task 3]

Common Rationalizations

Excuse	Reality
“I’ll just review the diff myself instead of dispatching a reviewer”	You’re the coordinator — reviewing the diff inline burns the context window you need to keep driving the work. Dispatch a reviewer subagent: the diff and the evaluation live in its context, and only the findings come back to you.
“The reviewer needs my whole session history to understand the change”	Hand it precisely crafted context, never your session’s history. That keeps the reviewer on the work product, not your thought process.

Red Flags

Never:

Skip review because “it’s simple”
Ignore Critical issues
Proceed with unfixed Important issues
Argue with valid technical feedback

If reviewer wrong:

Push back with technical reasoning
Show code/tests that prove it works
Request clarification

See template at: code-reviewer.md (opens in a new tab)

Colophon for this issue

Colophon

How this issue was made

Source

github.com/obra/superpowers, branch main, last pushed 22 September 2026.

Licence

MIT — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

15 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. One layout observed: skills/*/SKILL.md.

Issue colours

Resolved from a curated brand profile — hue 293°, chroma 0.190. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Removed “Requesting Code Review”, a leading h1 that duplicated the skill title.

Spec compliance

Every skill satisfies the Agent Skills specification’s frontmatter rules.

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Jesse Vincent, declaring 1 plugin. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /obra/superpowers.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

Dispatch a code reviewer subagent to catch issues before they cascade. The reviewer gets precisely crafted context for evaluation — never your session’s history.

Core principle: Review early, review often.

When to Request Review

Mandatory:

After each task in subagent-driven development
After completing major feature
Before merge to main

Optional but valuable:

When stuck (fresh perspective)
Before refactoring (baseline check)
After fixing complex bug

How to Request

1. Get git SHAs:

BASE_SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD~1)  # or: git merge-base origin/main HEAD
HEAD_SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD)

2. Dispatch code reviewer subagent:

Dispatch a general-purpose subagent, filling the template at code-reviewer.md (opens in a new tab)

Placeholders:

{DESCRIPTION} - Brief summary of what you built
{PLAN_OR_REQUIREMENTS} - What it should do
{BASE_SHA} - Starting commit
{HEAD_SHA} - Ending commit

3. Act on feedback:

Fix Critical issues immediately
Fix Important issues before proceeding
Note Minor issues for later
Push back if reviewer is wrong (with reasoning)

Example

[Just completed Task 2: Add verification function]

You: Let me request code review before proceeding.

BASE_SHA=$(git log --oneline | grep "Task 1" | head -1 | awk '{print $1}')
HEAD_SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD)

[Dispatch code reviewer subagent]
  DESCRIPTION: Added verifyIndex() and repairIndex() with 4 issue types
  PLAN_OR_REQUIREMENTS: Task 2 from docs/superpowers/plans/deployment-plan.md
  BASE_SHA: a7981ec
  HEAD_SHA: 3df7661

[Subagent returns]:
  Strengths: Clean architecture, real tests
  Issues:
    Important: Missing progress indicators
    Minor: Magic number (100) for reporting interval
  Assessment: Ready to proceed

You: [Fix progress indicators]
[Continue to Task 3]

Common Rationalizations

Excuse	Reality
“I’ll just review the diff myself instead of dispatching a reviewer”	You’re the coordinator — reviewing the diff inline burns the context window you need to keep driving the work. Dispatch a reviewer subagent: the diff and the evaluation live in its context, and only the findings come back to you.
“The reviewer needs my whole session history to understand the change”	Hand it precisely crafted context, never your session’s history. That keeps the reviewer on the work product, not your thought process.

Red Flags

Never:

Skip review because “it’s simple”
Ignore Critical issues
Proceed with unfixed Important issues
Argue with valid technical feedback

If reviewer wrong:

Push back with technical reasoning
Show code/tests that prove it works
Request clarification

See template at: code-reviewer.md (opens in a new tab)

Requesting Code Review

When to Request Review

How to Request

Example

Common Rationalizations

Red Flags

Colophon

Requesting Code Review

When to Request Review

How to Request

Example

Common Rationalizations

Red Flags

Appendix 7.1

Also bundledMarkdown · 1 file

Colophon

Appendix 7.1

Also bundledMarkdown · 1 file