/code-review

Use before coding when requirements have multiple reasonable interpretations, approaches require tradeoffs, or mistakes would be costly (permissions/payments/data migration/public APIs/data structures/hard-to-revert changes). Clarify requirements and design one question at a

Use when starting a project, reading project documentation or history, or resolving conflicts between documents. For current state, read only the latest documents designated by the project; do not proactively read archives; do not duplicate the spec; use long-term memory only

Use when creating a branch, using worktrees for parallel work, committing, or wrapping up. Covers branch naming, conventional commits, short-lived branches, worktree isolation, and final merge/cleanup.

Use in cross-session work when user-confirmed outcomes, non-goals, hard constraints, or acceptance criteria have not been written back to the current source of truth (spec), or reality conflicts with it enough that following it would be wrong; also use during wrap-up or handoff

Use before proposing a permanent fix for bugs, test failures, or unexpected behavior with an unknown root cause—mandatory when symptoms are far from the cause, a prior fix failed, or the issue crosses components. Reproduce, trace backward to the root cause, fix once at the

Use before implementation when behavior can be verified by automated tests and regression coverage has clear value. For bugs with an unknown root cause, use systematic-debugging first, then return for red-green. Follow red-green-refactor—write a failing test first, add only