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Deep Review Plugin

An independent Evaluator plugin for AI coding agents — cross-model code review with Codex integration and Sprint Contract support.

The Problem

AI coding agents have a fundamental blind spot: they review their own work.

• The agent that wrote the code also judges it — self-approval bias is structural
• Opus writes 500 lines and then "reviews" them in the same context window
• Critical bugs, architectural drift, and entropy accumulate undetected
• Without separation between Generator and Evaluator, "review" is just narration

Generator-Evaluator separation is not optional. It's the only way to get an honest second opinion.

The Solution

Deep Review spawns a separate Opus subagent with no knowledge of the original session context. It sees only the diff — not the reasoning, intentions, or assumptions behind the code. This is a structurally independent evaluation.

When Codex is installed, the review escalates to 3-way parallel verification: Claude Opus + codex:review + codex:adversarial-review. Findings are synthesized by confidence level.

Role in Harness Engineering

deep-review is the independent evaluator in the Deep Suite ecosystem, implementing the Generator-Evaluator separation from the Harness Engineering framework.

In the 2×2 matrix:

• Inferential Sensor: Independent Opus subagent review with zero Generator context — the primary quality gate for semantic issues that computational sensors cannot catch
• 3-Way Cross-Model Verification: Opus + Codex standard + Codex adversarial — exceeds the framework's "LLM-as-judge" concept
• Fitness-Aware Review: Consumes fitness.json rules and health_report from deep-work for architecture-intent-aware evaluation
• Sprint Contract Verification: Structured success criteria checking

Key Commands

Command	Description
/deep-review	Review current changes with an independent Opus subagent
/deep-review --contract	Sprint Contract-based structural verification
/deep-review --entropy	Entropy scan (duplicates, pattern drift, naming mismatches)
/deep-review init	Initialize per-project review rules interactively

Review Pipeline

Deep Review runs a 4-stage pipeline on every invocation:

Stage 1: Collect      — Detect environment, gather diff
Stage 2: Contract     — Load Sprint Contract if present
Stage 3: Deep Review  — Spawn Opus subagent in background (+ Codex if available)
Stage 4: Verdict      — Synthesize findings, emit APPROVE / CONCERN / REQUEST_CHANGES

Stage 1: Collect

Environment detection script determines the git state and collects the appropriate diff:

• non-git — ask user which files to review
• initial (zero commits) — review all files against empty tree
• clean — git diff {review_base}..HEAD
• staged — git diff --cached
• unstaged — git diff
• mixed — git diff HEAD
• untracked-only — git ls-files --others --exclude-standard

Excluded from diff: binaries, vendor/, node_modules/, *.min.js, *.generated.*, *.lock

Stage 2: Contract Check

--contract flag behavior:

• --contract SLICE-NNN: Load only .deep-review/contracts/SLICE-NNN.yaml (must be status: active)
• --contract: Load all status: active contracts in .deep-review/contracts/
• No flag: If active contracts exist in .deep-review/contracts/, they are loaded automatically
• status: archived contracts are excluded from auto-loading; if explicitly specified, a warning is shown
• YAML parse errors: skip the contract and emit a warning

Each criterion is verified against the actual code changes.

Stage 3: Deep Review

An independent code-reviewer agent is spawned via the Agent tool with model: opus and run_in_background: true. Before spawning, the user is notified which reviewers will run (Opus-only or 3-way). It receives only the diff, rules, and contract — never the originating session context.

The agent evaluates 5 criteria:

#	Criterion	Checks
1	Correctness	Logic bugs, edge cases, error handling
2	Architecture fit	rules.yaml violations, layer boundaries, dependency direction
3	Entropy	Duplicate code, pattern drift, ad-hoc helpers
4	Test coverage	Coverage relative to changes, missing scenarios
5	Readability	Will the next agent understand this on first read?

Stage 4: Verdict

Finding	Verdict
Any 🔴 Critical	REQUEST_CHANGES
🟡 Warnings, all reviewers agree	REQUEST_CHANGES
🟡 Warnings, split opinion	CONCERN
All pass	APPROVE

Report is saved to .deep-review/reports/{YYYY-MM-DD}-review.md.

Cross-Model Verification