Files
hassio-addons/.claude/skills/hassio-addon-workflow/references/codex-review.md
alexbelgium d9b92f4e70 docs(skill): simplify again after the code review, and demand a trigger for defensive branches
The full loop ran simplify (step 5) before Codex's code review (step 6) and never
again, so nothing walked back what the review added. Adversarial review is asked to
find what could go wrong, so its output is a list of arguments for more code and it
is never asked whether the branch it wants is reachable — accepting objections only
ratchets the diff upward. Step 6 now ends by re-running step 5's checks over the
hunks the review touched.

The other half was earlier than the review. The standing rule already said complexity
is bought only by a measurement, but it said it about performance, so a branch added
for robustness did not visibly fall under it. It now covers hypothetical hosts as
well as hypothetical performance: name the input that reaches a defensive branch and
the image it happens on, or delete it and let the case fail visibly. Step 3's
attack-your-own-plan list asks the same question before any code exists, which is
where it is cheapest to answer.

The case study in references/simplify.md is #3013: 25 lines of code at review, 10
merged. A pure-bash fallback written at implement time for images shipping
with-contenv but not s6-dumpenv — reasoned from the two binaries living in different
s6 packages, never demonstrated on a real image, and defending a case that would have
degraded to the pre-fix behaviour anyway — plus the helper function and second reset
that existed only to serve it. Deleting the fallback deleted all of it. The review's
own objections were correct and cost two tokens on an existing line.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-24 14:11:35 +02:00

49 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown

# Codex review — invocation and prompt guidance
Used for step 3 (plan review) and step 6 (code review), full loop only. Codex is a genuinely
different model reading the files itself; on this workload it has repeatedly been worth the
minutes. Delegate the invocation to a subagent (see SKILL.md's subagent-delegation note) so its
output doesn't land verbatim in your context — have the subagent return only Codex's objections
and your assessment of each.
## Invocation
**Use the CLI, not the MCP tool, for prompts of this size.** The `codex` MCP tool timed out twice
on ~4 KB prompts (2026-08-03); the CLI with the same content succeeded. The MCP tool is still fine
for short questions.
`--sandbox read-only` lets Codex read files but blocks writes and command execution, and
`approval_policy=never` means it will not be prompted for permission to run anything either — so
paste every number into the prompt rather than expecting Codex to gather it. `- <` feeds the
prompt file on stdin. Run it in the background so you are not blocked for the several minutes it
takes (`&` here, or your harness's background-task mechanism):
```bash
codex exec --model gpt-5.6-sol --sandbox read-only --skip-git-repo-check \
-c approval_policy='"never"' - < prompt.md > codex_out.txt 2>&1 &
```
## Writing the prompt
- **Plan review (step 3):** include the files to read, your measurements **with numbers**, the
proposed changes, and explicit instructions to challenge you. Ask direct questions ("is this
really add-on-fixable?", "give the precise flag set") rather than "review this".
- **Code review (step 6):** point it at `git diff origin/master...HEAD` plus the reasoning behind
each hunk. Ask specifically what breaks: upgrade paths, hosts unlike this one, users who
configured things by hand. Ask directly whether a simpler mechanism would achieve the same
thing — an outside reader spots one-level-too-deep framing far more easily than the person who
just built it.
- Codex's sandbox often cannot run local commands and falls back to reading GitHub, so paste the
evidence in rather than assuming it will find it.
**Codex agrees with confident premises.** It has confirmed a wrong conclusion stated too
confidently, and separately caught a genuine methodology error in the same review. Treat its
confirmations with the same scepticism as its objections — especially about the build.
**Its objections ratchet complexity upward.** An adversarial reviewer is asked to find what could
go wrong, so its output is a list of arguments for more code; it is never asked whether the branch
it wants is reachable. Separate "this is wrong" from "this is undefended" before you write
anything: the first is a bug and you fix it, the second is a claim about some host, and it needs
the same demonstration you would demand of a measurement. That is what step 6's second simplify
pass is for.