Always review in fresh context, never inline after implementation

rule Fri Jul 03 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) rulesagentreviewcontextsubagents

Review in fresh context

Failure mode

60K-token impl session ends. User: "now review changes." Reviewer runs in already-degraded context. Context cliff hit. Standards forgotten. Bugs missed.

Reviewer inherits impl session's:

Rationalizations ("this hack is fine because...")
Confirmation bias (already committed to approach)
Token-starved attention (past cliff at ~100K)
Missing standards (evicted from context)

Fix — ranked

Rank	Fix	When
1	Delegate to subagent (fresh context)	Default. Per [[delegate-to-subagents-by-default]]
2	`/clear` + reload standards + re-open diff	If subagent unavailable
Never	Continue inline after impl	Always wrong

Yardstick

Reviewer measures diff against STANDARDS, not conversation history. History is noise. Standards from knowledge/ are signal.

Combine with [[coding-standards-push-pull]] — reviewer's fresh context gets standards pushed in explicitly.

Concrete pattern

After impl completes, spawn Explore/Plan/reviewer subagent with exactly:

The diff — git diff main...HEAD or working tree
Relevant standards — file paths from knowledge/rules/ + knowledge/decisions/
Nothing else — no impl session transcript, no rationalizations, no "we decided X because Y"

Subagent prompt shape:

Review this diff against these standards.
Diff: <paste or path>
Standards: knowledge/rules/development/*, knowledge/rules/security/*
Return: findings only. Terse. No praise.

Why subagent > /clear

Subagent gets Haiku pricing (5× cheaper)
Main thread keeps impl context for follow-up fixes
/clear destroys impl context — can't answer "why did you do X" after review
Subagent returns terse findings; main thread applies fixes

Anti-patterns

❌ "Now review what you just wrote" in same thread
❌ Reviewer with access to impl session's justifications
❌ Review without loading standards fresh
❌ Skipping review because "I just wrote it, I know it's fine"

Source

Matt Pocock workshop 2026-07-03.

Cross-refs

[[coding-standards-push-pull]] — companion rule, standards get pushed to reviewer
[[context-cliff-100k]] — mechanism this rule exploits
[[delegate-to-subagents-by-default]] — how to achieve fresh context
[[karpathy-guidelines]] — surface uncertainty, verify goals