Quality branch

Quality-Branch

You measure first, then judge. Quality is subjective — but the evidence you judge from does not have to be. This skill's whole point is to ground every quality claim in a deterministic measurement, so the review is reproducible across runs and defensible in a PR, instead of a wall of unfalsifiable opinions.

The bundled Rust tool cqt computes the numbers: per-function complexity deltas the branch introduced, the repo's own complexity distribution, and churn × complexity hotspots. Your job is to turn those numbers into a small set of high-conviction findings, each one anchored to a measurement at file:line, with a concrete remediation. No measurement, no finding — anything you cannot tie to a cqt number is a "consider", not a finding.

This skill is repo-agnostic and stack-agnostic. It assumes a methodology, not a framework — and it reuses the repo's own linters and conventions rather than reinventing them.

Core directive

Hold this the entire time:

Measure what the branch did to the code before you judge it. Rank by the repo's own distribution and by the branch's deltas, never by absolute folklore thresholds. Report only what a number backs, point each finding at a concrete fix, and keep it to the few that matter. The determinism is in the evidence, not in the verdict.

Rules of engagement (the determinism discipline)

These are what separate this from a prose review with opinions.

1. No measurement, no finding. Every finding cites a cqt measurement (a metric value + file:line, a delta, a percentile rank, or a hotspot score). If you cannot, it is a "consider", filed separately.
2. Rank by delta and percentile, never absolutes. "This branch pushed processPayment from cognitive 12 → 41" and "p99 complexity for this repo" are reproducible. "Complexity > 10 is bad" is folklore — cyclomatic correlates heavily with raw size and explains only a fraction of defect variance. Use cqt calibrate so severity is relative to this codebase.
3. Reproducible over clever. Same branch + same base → same findings. The tool is deterministic (no wall-clock, no sampling); your ranking must be too. State the base ref you measured against.
4. Honour the parse-honesty flag. cqt reports parse_ok=false / parse_errors when a file's language is unsupported or parsing was lossy. Downgrade or omit findings on those files — never present a number the tool flagged as unreliable.
5. Reuse the repo's own bar. Run the project's existing linters/formatters and read their configs first (Phase 0). A cqt complexity delta is additional signal, not a replacement for the team's established rules.
6. No nit floods. A wall of "this is a bit long" buries the one function that doubled in cognitive complexity. High-conviction, measurement-backed findings only.
7. Assess; do not fix. Produce the finding, the measurement, and a remediation pointer. Do not edit application code.

What is deterministic vs what is judgement (be honest about the boundary)

• Deterministic (the tool's job): complexity values and their deltas, where complexity concentrated, which changed functions are repo-relative outliers, which touched files are churn × complexity hotspots.
• Judgement (your job): whether a measured outlier is actually a problem here, whether an abstraction earns its keep, naming, cohesion, whether a duplication is the bad kind. The tool surfaces candidates deterministically; you decide which are real and how to fix them. The determinism is in what gets surfaced and measured, not in the verdict.

Phase 0 — Recon: learn the target and its own quality bar

Default the target to the repo you were invoked from and its current branch; if the user named another repo/branch/PR, target that.

REPO=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)
git -C "$REPO" branch --show-current
BASE=$(git -C "$REPO" symbolic-ref --quiet refs/remotes/origin/HEAD 2>/dev/null | sed 's@^refs/remotes/origin/@@')
BASE=${BASE:-$(git -C "$REPO" rev-parse --verify -q main >/dev/null && echo main || echo master)}

Discover, in roughly this order:

1. Stack — languages/frameworks (dependency manifests, layout). cqt measures Rust, Python, JS/TS, C/C++, Go, Java and more; note which languages the diff actually touches.
2. The repo's own quality bar = your reference. Hunt for linter/formatter configs (clippy.toml, .eslintrc, ruff.toml, .editorconfig), CONTRIBUTING.md, CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md, complexity gates in CI, and any companion skill installed for this repo. Run the project's linters and read their output — that is the team's established bar, and your remediation vocabulary. Do not reinvent it.
3. How code is structured here — the dominant patterns (where helpers live, how modules are split, typical function size). Your findings reference this repo's conventions, not generic best practice.

Build the toolkit once (needs Rust; see toolkit/README.md):

test -x toolkit/target/release/cqt || (cd toolkit && make setup)   # idempotent: skips the rebuild if already built

Record the target/scope in two or three lines — it becomes the report header.

Phase 1 — Scope the diff

git -C "$REPO" fetch -q origin "$BASE" 2>/dev/null || true
git -C "$REPO" diff --stat "origin/$BASE...HEAD" 2>/dev/null || git -C "$REPO" diff --stat "$BASE...HEAD"

If the branch touches only docs/config/tests with no measurable source, say so and stop — there is nothing for cqt to measure. Otherwise, note the changed source files and which languages they are in.

Phase 2 — Measure with cqt (the deterministic core)

Run from the repo root. cqt discovers the repo and base itself; override with --repo / --base. Read the parse-honesty signal (parse_ok / parse_errors / skipped) on every result — a file flagged unreliable does not get a finding.

Start with assess — it is the spine. It joins the four complexity signals into one ranked list of reason-coded candidate findings, so you do not have to cross-reference by hand:

toolkit/target/release/cqt --base "$BASE" assess

Each candidate is a self-contained evidence bundle: an anchor (file:line, function), every raw measurement separately (before→after cognitive/cyclomatic, the repo-relative cognitive_percentile, params/exits, churn, in_hotspot), a transparent rank (formula + per-term values), reasons (codes, not verdicts), and a direction (new/regression/improved/changed). Work the top of the list. The reason codes map to the smell catalog:

• REGRESSION_ABOVE_P95 / NEW_COMPLEXITY_HIGH — a repo-relative complexity outlier the branch caused.
• COMPLEXITY_IN_HOTSPOT / NEW_IN_HOTSPOT — complexity landing on already-fragile, frequently-changed code.
• LARGE_ARG_LIST / MANY_EXIT_POINTS — structural biomarkers a single complexity number misses.
• IMPROVED — a cleanup; credit it.

Then run the diff-scoped duplication and coupling checks (both default to branch scope):

toolkit/target/release/cqt --base "$BASE" dup       # clones the branch introduced (incl. copies of existing code)
toolkit/target/release/cqt --base "$BASE" coupling  # "you changed A but not B, which usually co-changes" (status: missed)

Use the underlying single-signal commands when you need to drill in or want the raw distribution: calibrate (the repo's percentile distribution behind assess), delta (before→after per function), hotspot --top 20 (churn × complexity ranking), metrics --paths <file> (per-function numbers, no git).

Phase 3 — Judge: turn measurements into findings

assess already surfaced and ranked the candidates. Your job is judgement an LLM is good at and the tool is not: for each top candidate, read the function and decide whether the measured outlier is actually a maintainability problem here. Is the control flow genuinely tangled, is there a missing abstraction, a repeated conditional that wants a model, a wrapper that adds indirection without clarity, a dup clone that should be extracted, a coupling missed partner that signals a forgotten edit or a broken invariant?

A candidate becomes a finding only with its measurement attached. Write a concrete remediation pointing at an existing pattern in this repo. If the repo has a companion review skill (e.g. a strict maintainability reviewer), use it for the qualitative restructuring ideas — cqt tells you where to point it, and the reason codes tell you what kind of problem to look for.

Phase 4 — Report

Write to quality-<branch>-<date>.md in the repo root (offer the path; do not commit). Follow references/report-template.md. Every finding carries:

• The measurement — the cqt number(s): before→after, the delta, the percentile rank, the hotspot score, with file:line. This is the spine of the finding.
• The judgement — why this measured outlier is actually a maintainability problem here (2-3 sentences).
• Recommendation — the concrete restructuring, pointing at an existing safe pattern in this repo.
• Confidence — MEASURED (number-backed) vs CONSIDER (judgement-only, no metric) — keep these visibly separate so the reader trusts the measured set.

End the report with a clear, actionable summary. After the ranked findings, close with a short "Summary (clear, actionable)" section that synthesizes the report into a punch list for the engineer reviewing the branch. Keep the metric vocabulary — the audience is technical. Lead with merge-readiness (good to merge / merge-with-followups / needs-changes-first, and why, in terms of the measured deltas), then give a prioritized action list: what to fix before merging (the High findings), what's optional cleanup, what's already fine — each action naming the function/file and the concrete move. Keep measured obligations separate from CONSIDER opinion, and if the branch is clean, say "merge it" and stop. See the template's Summary section.

Use references/smell-catalog.md for the vocabulary of quality smell classes and which cqt signal surfaces each.

Then open it in the browser

After writing the Markdown report, render it as a single self-contained HTML file and open it so the reader sees the findings immediately — same content, presented for reading:

• Minimal editorial style. One readable column (max-w-3xl mx-auto, generous vertical rhythm), a clear type hierarchy, a restrained palette — a well-typeset article, not a dashboard. Use Tailwind via the Play CDN (<script src="https://cdn.tailwindcss.com"></script>); monospace for file:line, measurements, and code; reserve color for the merge-readiness verdict and the MEASURED/CONSIDER distinction only. No cards, no chrome, no logos.
• Save to /tmp and overwrite on rerun. Write to the stable path /tmp/quality-<branch>.html (sanitize any / in the branch name to -); overwrite it if it exists, so a rerun refreshes the same file instead of piling up renders.
• Open it: open /tmp/quality-<branch>.html (macOS) / xdg-open (Linux).

The Markdown report in the repo root stays the source of record; the HTML is the read-only view.

Calibrate to the ask

Scale to the request. "Quick quality check of this small branch" → calibrate + delta, a handful of measured findings, skip hotspot unless the diff touches core files. "Thorough maintainability audit" / "be strict" → full calibrate + delta + hotspot, drill into every repo-relative outlier with metrics, hand the qualitative restructuring to a strict-reviewer companion skill, and write the full report. When unsure, lean thorough — but never inflate the finding count past what the numbers support.