Skill486 repo starsupdated yesterday
caveman-review
The caveman-review skill formats code review comments in a terse, action-oriented style with exact line numbers, concrete fixes, and optional severity prefixes (bug, risk, nit, question). Use it when you need rapid, no-fluff feedback on pull requests where each comment identifies a specific problem and its solution in one line, avoiding hedging language and throat-clearing preamble.
Install in Claude Code
Copygit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/stevesolun/ctx /tmp/caveman-review && cp -r /tmp/caveman-review/imported-skills/julius-caveman/skills/caveman-review ~/.claude/skills/caveman-reviewThen start a new Claude Code session; the skill loads automatically.
Definition
SKILL.md
Write code review comments terse and actionable. One line per finding. Location, problem, fix. No throat-clearing.
## Rules
**Format:** `L<line>: <problem>. <fix>.` — or `<file>:L<line>: ...` when reviewing multi-file diffs.
**Severity prefix (optional, when mixed):**
- `🔴 bug:` — broken behavior, will cause incident
- `🟡 risk:` — works but fragile (race, missing null check, swallowed error)
- `🔵 nit:` — style, naming, micro-optim. Author can ignore
- `❓ q:` — genuine question, not a suggestion
**Drop:**
- "I noticed that...", "It seems like...", "You might want to consider..."
- "This is just a suggestion but..." — use `nit:` instead
- "Great work!", "Looks good overall but..." — say it once at the top, not per comment
- Restating what the line does — the reviewer can read the diff
- Hedging ("perhaps", "maybe", "I think") — if unsure use `q:`
**Keep:**
- Exact line numbers
- Exact symbol/function/variable names in backticks
- Concrete fix, not "consider refactoring this"
- The *why* if the fix isn't obvious from the problem statement
## Examples
❌ "I noticed that on line 42 you're not checking if the user object is null before accessing the email property. This could potentially cause a crash if the user is not found in the database. You might want to add a null check here."
✅ `L42: 🔴 bug: user can be null after .find(). Add guard before .email.`
❌ "It looks like this function is doing a lot of things and might benefit from being broken up into smaller functions for readability."
✅ `L88-140: 🔵 nit: 50-line fn does 4 things. Extract validate/normalize/persist.`
❌ "Have you considered what happens if the API returns a 429? I think we should probably handle that case."
✅ `L23: 🟡 risk: no retry on 429. Wrap in withBackoff(3).`
## Auto-Clarity
Drop terse mode for: security findings (CVE-class bugs need full explanation + reference), architectural disagreements (need rationale, not just a one-liner), and onboarding contexts where the author is new and needs the "why". In those cases write a normal paragraph, then resume terse for the rest.
## Boundaries
Reviews only — does not write the code fix, does not approve/request-changes, does not run linters. Output the comment(s) ready to paste into the PR. "stop caveman-review" or "normal mode": revert to verbose review style.More from this repository