Harness Engineering Technical Review

Progressive-disclosure entrypoint for findings-first technical review in Harness Engineering.

Philosophy

• Findings first, implementation second.
• Verify feedback before implementation.

When To Use

• Technical review of a PR, branch diff, file set, spec, or plan.
• Validation of incoming review feedback before implementing requested changes.
• Validation that a proposed fix addresses the reported Linear QA behavior instead of hiding a symptom.
• Review of domain-language drift when code, specs, or plans introduce project terms.

Route elsewhere:

• he-code-review for broader readiness recommendation and stage routing.
• he-work for implementation.
• he-deepen-spec or he-deepen-plan for document rewriting.

Inputs

• Review target (PR, branch, current diff, file path, spec, or plan).
• Access to target evidence (diff/files/docs/tests).
• Relevant CONTEXT.md or CONTEXT-MAP.md when domain language is part of the change.
• Optional Linear QA issue, reproduction steps, or expected-behavior claim to verify.
• Optional review-feedback items to validate.

Outputs

• schema_version: 1 when structured output is requested.
• review_mode (code-diff-review or document-review)
• findings (P0-P3) with location, impact, minimal fix, confidence
• no_critical_findings statement when appropriate
• feedback_response_plan (accept, clarify, push_back_with_evidence)

Procedure

1. Resolve mode and target; stop if unusable.
2. Review with repo-first evidence and deduplicate findings.
3. Check domain-language drift when the change introduces terms, aliases, relationships, or behavior boundaries.
4. For Linear QA reports: compare reported behavior, expected behavior, reproduction path, and proposed fix evidence before accepting the implementation.
5. For incoming feedback: read, clarify unclear items, verify, then respond technically.
6. Return findings-first output plus open questions and next action.

Validation

• Ensure mode matches target and findings contain severity, location, impact, minimal fix, confidence.
• Ensure domain drift findings include the code/spec location and the relevant CONTEXT.md mismatch or missing update.
• Ensure QA-related findings distinguish symptom hiding from behavior correction.
• Fail fast: stop at first blocking prerequisite or failed validation gate.

Constraints

• Redact secrets, credentials, tokens, and sensitive data by default.
• Do not implement unclear or unverified feedback.
• If feedback conflicts with prior user decisions, escalate with evidence first.
• Apply the context-disposition policy: move important still-valid context to references and index it when meaningful; intentionally discard stale, duplicated, unsafe, superseded, or low-signal text.

Anti-Patterns

• Blindly implementing feedback without verification.
• Treating terminology-only drift as harmless when it changes behavior or user meaning.
• Reviewing style while missing correctness/regression risks.
• Partial implementation when interdependent items are unclear.

Examples

• "Can you review this PR diff for correctness before I implement the CodeRabbit feedback?"
• "Please check whether the plan is technically sound before he-work, especially the migration and rollback steps."
• "The branch renames Customer to Account; can you validate whether that matches CONTEXT.md and the linked Linear issue?"
• "Can you validate whether this proposed fix solves the Linear QA report or only masks the symptom?"

References

• Canonical contract: ./Infrastructure/references/contract.yaml
• Canonical eval cases: ./Infrastructure/references/evals.yaml
• Canonical task profile: ./Infrastructure/references/task-profile.json
• Compatibility mirror (non-canonical): ./references
• Findings template and assets: ./finding.md.tmpl, ./assets/icon-small.png, ./assets/icon-large.png
• Domain model routing: ../../../references/domain-model-routing.md
• QA intake routing: ../../../references/qa-intake-routing.md Read when: a technical review target changes project terminology, CONTEXT.md, or Linear issue meaning. Read when: reviewing whether a fix actually satisfies a reported QA behavior and its reproduction path. Read when: deeper doctrine, templates, or compatibility details are needed.

Subagent Routing

• Canonical map: ../../../references/subagent-routing.md
• Machine-readable policy: ../../../references/routing-map.json
• Load stage policy from routing-map.json and resolve roles from ~/.codex/agents/manifest.json.
• If auto-spawn is unavailable or required roles are missing, continue inline, list manual-launch roles, and route role provisioning to [[codex-agent-creator]] (../../../../../Skills/agent-ops/codex-agent-creator/SKILL.md).