/audit

name: comments:audit
description: >-
  Audit code comments for AI slop: restatement, narration/decision-log,
  self-praise, docstring-scope, and section-divider banners. Audits a diff (the
  comments a change introduced) or a whole repo, ranks by intrinsic complexity,
  fans out judging agents, and applies the trims to a fresh branch. Use when
  asked to audit, trim, or clean up code comments, or as the comment pass of a
  branch-finishing flow. Not a general code review: skip it when the change
  added no comments.
argument-hint: "[--all] [--base <ref>] [--mr <iid>] [--path <glob>] [--sort <key>] [--limit <n>] [--report] [--fix] [--format <template>]"
allowed-tools:
  - Bash
  - Read
  - Workflow

Comments Audit

Find low-value comments and act on them. A deterministic Shiki pass extracts comments over TextMate grammars, the scope selects which to judge, a fan-out of Claude Code agents judges each against the owner's comment model, and a deterministic applier writes the changes to a branch. The judge returns one of three actions per comment: `keep` (it earns its place), `trim` (it carries no fact, delete or shorten it), or `rewrite` (it carries a real fact under AI voice, strip the voice and keep the fact). A comment earns its place when it adds information not readily available in the adjacent code. See [`judge/prompt.md`](../../judge/prompt.md) for the full model and carve-outs.

Model-invocable so `ship` can run it as its comment pass. The consent gate at [Preflight](#preflight) caps the cost of a misfire at one cheap extraction.

The pipeline is three steps: `preflight` (extract, rank, build the job), the Workflow tool (judge), and `apply` (write the trims or report them).

Scope and Flags

Two scopes run the same pipeline. The flags select scope and narrow it:

• Default, `--base <ref>`, `--mr <iid>`: diff scope. Judges the comments a change

introduced. Default is the working tree (staged plus unstaged). `--base main` is the merge-base with a ref. `--mr <iid>` is a GitLab merge request over `glab`.

• `--all`: repo scope. Judges every tracked code file's comments.
• `--path <glob>`: narrow either scope to matching paths. Repeatable. Prefer it on

a first `--all` run on a large repo to cap the agent count.

• `--sort lines|chars|score` (default `score`): rank by intrinsic comment

complexity so the longest, densest comments judge first.

• `--limit <n>`: keep only the top N ranked comments.

Both scopes exempt machine-meaningful comments deterministically: lint and compiler directives (`eslint-disable`, `noqa`, `go:generate`), shebang lines, and license headers never reach the judge.

• `--fix`: ask the judge for a concrete suggestion per finding.
• `--report`: at apply time, print findings instead of writing a branch.
• `--format <template>`: at apply time, pipe each edited file through a

formatter before committing.

Preflight

Run from the repository you are auditing (the script resolves the git root itself, so stay in the target repo rather than `cd`-ing into the plugin):

bun <plugin-dir>/skills/audit/scripts/audit.ts preflight $ARGUMENTS

This extracts and ranks the comments, builds the judging job on disk, and prints a human summary (`N comments / M files / ~K agents / ~T tokens`) followed by a machine block:

<preflight>
{"scriptPath": "...", "argsPath": "...", "jobDir": "...", "count": N, "shardCount": K}
</preflight>

Read the `<preflight>` block. Present the count, file count, and rough token estimate to the user. **Wait for the user to confirm before fanning out.** Nothing runs until they do. A 5,000-comment repo is roughly 250 agents; `--path` and `--limit` cap that.

`--all` requires a clean working tree, because it reads the working tree but applies from HEAD. Commit or stash first if preflight reports a dirty tree.

Judge

On confirmation, read `argsPath` (it is JSON) and call the Workflow tool with the `scriptPath` from the preflight block and `args` set to the parsed contents of `argsPath`:

Workflow({ scriptPath: <scriptPath>, args: <parsed job-args.json> })

Each agent reads one shard, judges its comments, and writes verdicts to disk. The workflow logs a small summary (shard count and how many were flagged). The bulk verdicts stay on disk, off the conversation, for `apply` to read.

Apply

bun <plugin-dir>/skills/audit/scripts/audit.ts apply --job <jobDir> [--report] [--fix] [--format <template>]

Default apply re-extracts the judged files and matches verdicts to comments by id at their current position, applies the trims and rewrites, and commits to a fresh `comments/audit-<hash>` branch off HEAD. The commit is built with git plumbing, so the working tree is never modified and the current branch stays checked out. A `rewrite` replaces the comment span in place with the de-voiced text, so the diff shows the cleaned comment. A partial trim carries the kept comment as rewritten text (`trimTo`) and is spliced the same way; a legacy line-range trim (`trimToLines`) that would strand a mid-sentence fragment is refused and listed for manual handling instead. A comment that moved or changed since preflight gets a new id, matches no verdict, and is skipped. Review the result with `git diff HEAD..comments/audit-<hash>`. Apply requires a clean working tree. The success message and `--report` both open with a `N delete / M trim / K rewrite across F files` split, counting only what auto-applies: a `trim` that keeps nothing is reported as `delete`, and refused verdicts appear as a `, J to manual handling` tail.

`--report` prints the findings grouped by file (`path:line action category confidence rationale`, with an old → new preview for each rewrite and a `keep:` preview for each partial trim) and writes nothing. Use it to review before applying, or on a dirty tree.

Formatting

The applier splices lines without running a formatter, which can leave debris a formatter would fix (a stray blank, a collapsed