Affinage

/affinage

Use this skill when the user wants to act on external claims about a PR — review comments from humans or bots, plus failing CI checks and merge conflicts — and wants those claims graded through the same lens /age uses for fresh review, then handed to /cure for application.

/affinage always refines the claims that already exist on the PR (comments, CI failures, conflicts). Whether it also generates fresh /age findings depends on how it was reached:

• Standalone — the user typed /affinage <pr> directly, with no upstream handoff_context. The PR diff has not been reviewed in this session, so /affinage runs /age over it and folds the findings into the same report (unless --no-age).
• Chained — reached from /cook or /cure with a handoff_context. /age already ran in that chain, so /affinage skips the fresh pass to avoid double-grading and only refines existing claims.

See ## Fresh-window review for the detection rule and ## Merge-conflict resolution for the conflict path.

Inputs

/affinage [<pr-ref>] [--auto --stake <floor>] [--plate] [--safe] [--open-pr] [--hard] [--full] [--include-outdated]

<pr-ref> accepts a PR number, a full GitHub PR URL, or nothing (auto-detect via gh pr view --json number on the current branch).

Flags:

• --auto --stake <floor> — autonomous mode. <floor> is blocker, high, medium+, or all (same semantics as /cure). Skips the selection gate, dispatches /cure --auto --stake <floor>, posts all replies without prompting.
• --safe — also gate the cure-selection and merge-conflict-resolution steps (which otherwise run autonomously by default). Reply posting is gated by default regardless of this flag — only --auto posts without prompting. Use --safe when you also want to choose before anything is fixed or a conflict is resolved.
• --open-pr — allow affinage's terminal /plate to open a new PR when none exists (otherwise plate only updates the already-open one).
• --plate — one-shot publish combo, equivalent to --auto --stake medium+ --open-pr: autonomously triage, cure the recommended floor (medium-and-above plus cheap contained-fix lows), post every reply, then plate. Because it carries --auto, replies post without prompting. An explicit --stake <floor> overrides the medium+ default.
• --hard — propagated metacognitive-gate flag. /affinage does not fire the gate; passes --hard forward to its terminal /plate at publication.
• --full — un-collapses ## Low when ≥10 low-severity findings exist (mirrors /age --full).
• --include-outdated — include outdated review threads. Default skips them.
• --no-age — skip the standalone fresh /age pass. No effect when chained (the pass is already skipped). Use when you only want to triage existing comments, CI failures, and conflicts.

Portability reference: ../cheese/references/harness-portability.md. It covers helper resolution, sub-agent dispatch, GitHub operations, and handoff transitions; prefer the bundled or repo-local helper first, and treat ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR} as optional host-provided fallback. The handoff blocks below are the portable contract; slash commands are host renderings, not the control model.

Flow

1. Resolve PR. From <pr-ref> or gh pr view --json number on the current branch. Resolve <owner>/<repo> from the git remote.

2. Fetch PR status. Call python3 skills/affinage/scripts/affinage.pyz pr-status <pr>. The script returns JSON with build status, per-check failure summaries (last ~10 lines of failed logs + parsed failed-test names), and merge state. Map the exit code:

   • Exit 0 — proceed with grading.
   • Exit 3 (logs-expired) — the build is failing but every failing check's log was unfetchable (typically expired GitHub Actions logs past the retention window), so there is nothing to ground a CI finding on. Write status: halt: pr-status-logs-expired and stop with the hint: "CI is failing but the logs have expired — rerun the failed jobs (gh run rerun <run-id> --failed, where <run-id> is the /actions/runs/<id>/ segment of the failing check's url, or read it from gh pr checks) and re-invoke /affinage."
   • Any other non-zero (1 PR/gh API error, 2 missing gh binary) — write status: halt: pr-status-unavailable and stop.
   • Merge conflicts. If merge.mergeable is CONFLICTING or merge.state is DIRTY, the PR has unresolved conflicts. Resolve them before grading — see ## Merge-conflict resolution.

3. Fresh-window review. If this is a standalone run and --no-age was not passed: compute files_changed/insertions/deletions from the PR diff stat, grep it for age_route.OVERRIDE_FLAGS risk flags, and call age_route.route(files_changed=..., insertions=..., deletions=..., risk_flags=..., entry="affinage", comments=<unresolved-thread-count>, ci_class=<"failing"|"red"|"flaky"|None from pr-status>) — the same router /age itself calls, but sized with affinage's comment count and CI failure class so a heavily-commented or red-CI PR gets the bigger fan-out even on a small diff. If the host only ships the bundle, echo '{"files_changed": <n>, "insertions": <n>, "deletions": <n>, "risk_flags": [...], "entry": "affinage", "comments": <n>, "ci_class": <"failing"|"red"|"flaky"|null>}' | python3 skills/affinage/scripts/affinage.pyz age-route is the fallback (JSON on stdin, route JSON on stdout). Pass the returned n/lenses/effort into the /age dispatch (so /age uses affinage's sizing rather than recomputing from entry="age" defaults) and treat each finding as an additional input. See ## Fresh-window review.

4. Fetch comments.

   • Inline threads: gh api repos/<owner>/<repo>/pulls/<pr>/comments. This REST endpoint returns individual review comments without thread-level resolution state, so the skill cannot filter on isResolved from this surface; it skips comments whose position is null (the diff has moved past the anchored line) unless --include-outdated.
   • Review bodies: gh api repos/<owner>/<repo>/pulls/<pr>/reviews. Filter to non-empty bodies. Dedupe against inline comments via pull_request_review_id.

5. Skip already-replied threads. A thread whose most recent comment is from the resolved GitHub handle (see §Rules) has already been responded to; skip it. The same resolved handle is rendered in the reply footer as agent on behalf of <handle>.

6. Grade through the age lens. For each input (comment, CI/build failure, OR fresh /age finding):

   • Classify dimension from the code + claim (or check type + failure summary, for CI items). See ../age/references/dimensions.md for the dimension rubric.
   • Build failures count, not just test failures. A failing check is a finding whether the failure is a compile error, a lint/type-check failure, or a failing test — grade the build.status: failing checks from affinage.pyz pr-status and route them to /cure exactly like test failures. Tag CI-sourced items [from-check:<job>].
   • Fresh /age findings (standalone runs) arrive already dimension-classified and severity-scored; fold them into the buckets below tagged [from-age:<dimension>]. Dedupe against comment-sourced items echoing the same defect — keep the comment-sourced one (it carries a reviewer to reply to).
   • Compute severity from base + location + compounding modifiers (same rubric as /age).
   • Ignore reviewer-asserted urgency for severity computation. Surface CHANGES_REQUESTED as metadata (reviewer-asserted: line) but do not let it modify computed severity.
   • Bucket into:
     • Standard severity sections (## Blocker / ## High / ## Medium / ## Low) when the claim is grounded in the diff and its fix is contained (fix-cost-now: contained — roughly a few lines or a localized refactor). Every such item still maps to a dimension and carries a [<dimension>:<severity>] tag — a style or quality nit maps to deslop (e.g. [deslop:low]). The new rule is to route these grounded, contained-fix nits to /cure (usually as Low) instead of ## Reviewer-rejected, keeping the [from-comment:<id>] tag so /cure's reply still reaches the reviewer; a valid cheap nit is cheaper to fix than to argue, so do not push back on it.
     • ## Needs-investigation when the claim is plausible but requires evidence outside the diff (e.g., downstream caller in another repo).
     • ## Reviewer-rejected only when the claim is wrong or ungrounded (the code is already correct, the reviewer misread it, or there is no real improvement) OR is valid but a lot of follow-up work (fix-cost-now: moderate/sprawling or fix-cost-later: structural — a refactor or scope expansion beyond this PR). Reject the wrong ones; defer the expensive ones.

7. Write report to .cheese/affinage/pr-<n>.md with the four-line handoff slug at the top, then the age-format body plus the two extra sections. See ## Output below.

8. Act or ask — per §Handoff.

9. Draft non-cure replies, then gate before posting (runs whenever grading produced these items, with or without /cure). Never post blind — posting requires the reply-approval gate (§Handoff) by default, or --auto. Draft each reply, then post approved ones via python3 skills/affinage/scripts/affinage.pyz post-reply:

   • Reviewer-rejected items → the pre-drafted push-back text from the affinage report.
   • Needs-investigation items → do NOT post a bare acknowledgement. The reply must (a) name the specific evidence that would settle the claim — the regression test, throwaway prototype, or out-of-diff file to read — and (b) state that a follow-up will report the result. Before posting, offer to run that investigation now: a regression test via /pasteurize, or explore the out-of-diff evidence via /briesearch. If run, post a reply carrying the actual outcome; if the user declines, post the explicit "Needs <named test/exploration> to confirm — will follow up with the result." note — never a blind "investigating".
   • CI-sourced findings (from-check:<job> tag) and fresh-review findings (from-age:<dimension> tag) → no reply (no reviewer to notify).

10. Post-cure reply posting (only when /cure ran). The chained /cure applies its fixes and runs its /age --scope loop but returns without plating (it owns no publication in the /affinage chain). When /cure returns, read .cheese/cure/pr-<n>.md's ### Applied / ### Deferred sections and post per-finding replies via python3 skills/affinage/scripts/affinage.pyz post-reply:

    • Applied (with from-comment:<id> tag) → "Fixed — <applied summary>."
    • Deferred (with from-comment:<id> tag) → "Attempted fix reverted — <reason>."

11. Plate — the final writes above (steps 9–10) must land before publication. Once every approved reply is posted, and only when the cure applied ≥1 fix (there is something to publish), dispatch terminal /plate [--open-pr] [--hard] [--safe] to commit and publish cure's fixes to the PR. /affinage owns this dispatch; publication lands after all replies. After publication lands, run the § Post-PR learnings write-back (../cure/SKILL.md § Handoff) — affinage owns terminal /plate, so it owns the write-back the chained /cure suppressed. Skip plate and write-back when no fix was applied — there is nothing to publish.

Fresh-window review

Detection: standalone = no upstream handoff_context; chained = a handoff_context with source_skill: /cook or /cure. Behaviour:

• Standalone (and --no-age not passed): compute the entry="affinage" router call (Flow step 3) and run /age <pr-ref> over the PR diff, passing the router's n/lenses/effort so /age doesn't recompute a smaller entry="age" sizing from the diff alone. Fold each returned finding into the affinage report's severity sections tagged [from-age:<dimension>]. They flow to /cure with every other selected finding and get no GitHub reply — there is no reviewer to notify, same as [from-check:…] items.
• Chained, or --no-age: skip the pass. Re-running /age on an already-reviewed diff double-grades.

Run the fresh /age before grading external claims so a comment that merely echoes an /age finding can be deduped. To keep the parent context lean, run the pass under the same sub-agent gate as grading (## Sub-agent context gate).

Merge-conflict resolution

When affinage.pyz pr-status reports merge.mergeable: CONFLICTING or merge.state: DIRTY, the PR cannot merge until conflicts are resolved. /affinage does not resolve conflicts by hand — it routes to /melt, which runs the structural cascade (mergiraf → rerere → kdiff3).

1. Materialise the conflicts locally: gh pr checkout <pr>, then git merge origin/<base>. (gh pr checkout neither opens nor updates the PR, so it does not breach the no-/gh rule.)
2. Hand off to /melt. It first checks for squash-merge residue and stops with remedies if found — surface those verbatim and do not auto-apply.
3. After /melt resolves cleanly, the resolution commit is owned by /melt / /cure. /plate owns the verified commit and existing-PR update transaction.

• Default and --auto mode: run the checkout + /melt automatically before dispatching /cure, then re-run affinage.pyz pr-status to confirm mergeable cleared. If /melt cannot resolve (manual kdiff3 needed, or squash residue), write status: halt: merge-conflicts-need-human and stop.
• --safe mode: gate the checkout + /melt behind the handoff prompt — offer "Resolve merge conflicts" alongside the cure-selection options.

Sub-agent context gate

/affinage keeps dialogue, selection, approval state, and reply posting in the parent context. When the parent context would balloon, resolve a fresh read-only reviewer through the shared agent resolver. A compatible reviewer is preferred; a general worker qualifies only with prompt-only no-write enforcement and degraded: true:

• Total input count (comments + CI failures) exceeds 10.
• Diff exceeds ~25 KB.
• Threads span more than 5 files.

The sub-agent returns a digest: graded findings table with dimension, severity, confidence, grounded-evidence cite, and pre-drafted push-back text for any Reviewer-rejected items. The parent owns the report write, selection gate, /cure dispatch, and reply posting.

Digest size, parent-vs-sub-agent split, and harness-agnostic sub-agent selection live in ../age/references/sub-agent-gate.md.

Preferred tools and fallbacks

Call source-code search and read backends directly according to the shared code-intelligence-routing.md contract. Beyond source-code routing there are affinage-specific tools:

Need	Prefer	Fallback
PR status (build + merge)	skills/affinage/scripts/affinage.pyz pr-status	manual gh pr checks + gh pr view
GitHub fetch	gh api	none (skill halts)
Reply posting	skills/affinage/scripts/affinage.pyz post-reply	none — direct gh api calls bypass the agent on behalf of <handle> attribution
Diff inspection	delta	git diff --unified=3

Output

Write to .cheese/affinage/pr-<n>.md with the four-line handoff slug at the top, then the age-style body with two extra sections:

status: ok | halt: <one-line reason>
next: cure | done
artifact: <path-to-prior-cure-or-press-report-if-any>
<one-line orientation: what the PR does and what was graded>

# Affinage Report — PR #<n>

## Orientation
<one or two factual sentences about the PR and what was graded>

## PR status
- Build: passing | failing (N jobs)
- Merge: clean | conflicts (resolved via /melt | needs human)
- Comments: K unresolved (M skipped as outdated)
- Fresh review: ran /age (N findings) | skipped (chained) | skipped (--no-age)

## Blocker
- **[from-comment:<id>] [security:blocker]** alice on `src/auth.ts:42` — token parsed without validation.
  - location: contract · fix-cost-now: contained · fix-cost-later: structural · confidence: certain
  - reviewer-asserted: changes-requested
  - recommendation: validate `authorization` header; reject with 401 on missing.
- **[from-check:test-suite] [correctness:blocker]** CI job `test-suite` — 3 tests failing in `tests/auth.test.ts`.
  - location: contract · fix-cost-now: contained · fix-cost-later: structural · confidence: certain
  - recommendation: re-run after fixing the missing null check.
- **[from-check:build] [correctness:blocker]** CI job `build` — `tsc` fails: `src/auth.ts:42: 'token' is possibly undefined`.
  - location: contract · fix-cost-now: contained · fix-cost-later: structural · confidence: certain
  - recommendation: narrow `token` before use; build is red until this compiles.
- **[from-age:efficiency] [efficiency:high]** fresh review — `src/api/users.ts:88` re-fetches the user inside the loop body.
  - location: hot path · fix-cost-now: contained · fix-cost-later: contained · confidence: speculating
  - recommendation: hoist the fetch above the loop.

## High
... (same shape)

## Medium
... (same shape)

## Low
- **[from-comment:<id>] [deslop:low]** copilot on `src/utils/format.ts:18` — rename `data` to `lineItems` for clarity.
  - location: class · fix-cost-now: contained · fix-cost-later: contained · confidence: certain
  - recommendation: rename `data` → `lineItems`. Valid cheap nit — fixed via `/cure`, not pushed back.
... (same shape; collapsible per --full rules)

## Needs-investigation
- **[from-comment:<id>]** bob on `src/api/users.ts:108` — "might break analytics pipeline."
  - reason: claim plausible but pipeline lives in a different repo; diff cannot confirm.
  - suggested action: human reads `analytics-svc/consumers/users.ts`.

## Reviewer-rejected
- **[from-comment:<id>]** copilot on `src/auth.ts:30` — "missing `await`; this promise is unhandled."
  - reason: wrong — `parseToken` is synchronous (returns `string`, not a `Promise`, see `src/auth.ts:12`); there is nothing to await.
  - draft reply: "`parseToken` is synchronous here (returns `string`, `src/auth.ts:12`), so there's no promise to await. Leaving as-is."
- **[from-comment:<id>]** dana on `src/api/users.ts:60` — "extract this into a generic repository layer."
  - reason: valid but large — fix-cost-now: sprawling (6 files across 2 slices); scope expansion beyond this PR.
  - draft reply: "Agreed this would be cleaner, but it's a cross-slice refactor beyond this PR's scope — filing a follow-up rather than growing this change."

## Confidence
<certain | speculating | don't know> — <one-line justification>

## Next step
Auto-fixing the recommended set via `/cure`; drafted replies are held for the reply-approval gate before posting (`--auto` posts directly). Replies post before terminal `/plate` publishes cure's fixes. On a reason to ask / `--safe`, the cure-selection prompt renders inline — pick findings to cure or `none` to stop.

Empty severity sections are omitted entirely. ## Needs-investigation and ## Reviewer-rejected are omitted when no items land there.

Per-finding confidence: uses the voice-kernel scale (../age/references/voice.md § Reasoning posture): certain — the defect is verified by direct evidence (diff/code read, command output); speculating — inferred from indirect signal. A don't know grading never ships as a severity row — route it to ## Needs-investigation.

status: ok when grading completed; status: halt: <reason> when gh or pr-status.py failed in a way that blocks honest grading. next: is set per §Handoff — cure when ≥1 finding meets the medium+ floor; done otherwise.

Handoff

Pipeline: culture → mold → cook → press → age → cure → plate · /affinage is parallel to /age and feeds /cure.

After the report lands, affinage acts by default and asks only on a genuine reason (a sprawling/structural fix in the recommended set, conflicting findings) or under --safe (Flow step 8). What it acts on depends on whether any severity-section finding exists.

When at least one severity-section finding exists (any severity, including Low) — compute the recommended composite (all-medium, cheap). With no reason to ask and no --safe: announce the one-line selection, dispatch /cure (below), then render the reply-approval gate before posting the non-cure replies (Flow step 9) and the cure-dependent replies (step 10) — never post blind. --auto posts without the gate (§Auto mode). On a reason to ask or --safe: render the cure-selection table inline (per ../cure/references/selection.md) and ask via ../cheese/references/handoff-gate.md, pre-selecting the recommended composite and flagging heavy rows. Lead with the recommended composite, then present the four severity-floor options below it, in the same most-inclusive-to-least order, so the gate is predictable across every run:

• The five severity-floor options (recommended all-medium, cheap, then all, all-medium, all-high, all-blocker) are exactly age's — see ../age/SKILL.md § Selection gate for their labels and semantics.

Then offer the non-floor options last:

• Pick findings to fix — free-text reply using /age//cure verbs (1,3,5, all-blocker, all-medium, all-high, cheap, all, none, skip N).
• Resolve merge conflicts (offered only when the PR has conflicts) — checkout + /melt per ## Merge-conflict resolution, then re-render this gate.
• Stop — leave the report for later — equivalent to none.

The "present all four severity options on every run, empty-set-resolves-to-none" rule is age's — see ../age/SKILL.md § Selection gate.

When no severity-section finding exists but Reviewer-rejected or Needs-investigation has items — /cure has nothing to act on, so skip it. Posting is gated by default; render the reply-approval gate (below) and post nothing until the user chooses. Only --auto posts without this gate.

Reply-approval gate — the single gate both Handoff branches use before any post-reply call:

• Post pushbacks only (recommended) — post Reviewer-rejected drafts; hold Needs-investigation items for investigation.
• Investigate now, then post — for each Needs-investigation item, run the follow-up investigation (/pasteurize for a regression test, /briesearch to explore the out-of-diff evidence), then post a reply carrying the actual result.
• Post all — post every drafted push-back and the explicit Needs-investigation follow-up notes (naming the needed evidence) without running the investigation first.
• Skip posting — leave the report for later; post nothing.
• Per-finding — free-text pick of which drafts to post or investigate.

After the selection, post the approved replies via Flow step 9. Then — only when the cure applied ≥1 fix — dispatch terminal /plate (Flow step 11) so publication follows the replies; when no cure ran or no fix applied, there is nothing to plate. Exit with status: ok / next: done — see ## Auto mode § "no findings meet the floor" for the auto path.

Slug next: values. Write next: cure when at least one finding meets the medium+ floor (medium-or-above, or a cheap contained-fix low). Write next: done when no severity-section finding exists or all meeting items are empty-selection after floor resolution.

On a non-empty cure selection (auto-selected by default or chosen at the gate), immediately dispatch /cure <slug> [--safe] [--open-pr] [--hard] with locked context:

handoff_context:
  source_skill: /affinage
  source_report: .cheese/affinage/pr-<n>.md
  selection: "<verb or explicit ids>"
  resolved_ids: [<expanded ids>]

/cure re-confirms cited ids and goes straight to apply. Because the handoff carries source_skill: /affinage, /cure applies its fixes and runs its /age --scope loop but suppresses its own terminal /plate and returns — affinage owns publication. Propagate --safe, --open-pr, and --hard to /cure when in scope. On return, /affinage posts every reply (Flow steps 9–10) — its terminal final writes — and only then dispatches terminal /plate [--open-pr] [--hard] [--safe] (Flow step 11), so publication lands after every reply. Skip the plate dispatch when the cure applied no fix.

Auto mode

When invoked with --auto --stake <floor> (or --plate, which enters this mode with --stake medium+ --open-pr):

• Skip the selection gate.
• If the PR has merge conflicts, resolve them via /melt first (see ## Merge-conflict resolution). If /melt cannot resolve, halt with status: halt: merge-conflicts-need-human before any /cure dispatch.
• If standalone (and --no-age not passed), run the fresh /age pass so [from-age:…] findings join the floor-based auto-selection.
• Auto-select every finding (comment-sourced, CI-sourced, OR fresh-/age-sourced) that meets the floor — severity at or above the floor, plus cheap contained-fix lows when the floor is medium+ (same floor semantics as /cure).
• Dispatch /cure --auto --stake <floor>.
• After /cure --auto and its downstream /age --scope --auto chain settle, post replies for the originally graded items only. Do NOT re-grade for findings discovered by /age --scope.
• Reviewer-rejected items: post the pre-drafted push-back.
• Needs-investigation items: post the explicit follow-up note naming the evidence that would settle the claim ("Needs <named test/prototype> to confirm — will follow up with the result."). Auto mode does not pause to run the spike; it posts the honest follow-up note, never a blind acknowledgement.
• After the cure chain settles and all replies are posted (previous two bullets), /affinage dispatches terminal /plate --open-pr [--hard] to publish cure's fixes — the final writes precede publication. /cure suppresses its own terminal /plate for the /affinage chain (keyed on source_skill: /affinage). Skip the dispatch when no fix was applied.

The whole cure chain (cure → /age --scope --auto → up to the two-cure-pass cap) must run in the parent affinage context so the post-cure reply step still has the original graded findings (slug, ids, from-comment:<id> tags, drafted push-back text) in memory. Spawning the cure chain in a sub-agent breaks reply posting — do not.

If no findings meet the floor, skip the /cure dispatch, post replies for Reviewer-rejected + Needs-investigation items only, and exit with status: ok / next: done.

--hard mode

/affinage passes --hard to its own terminal /plate (dispatched after replies), which fires /hard-cheese after verifying the final artifact state. /cure does not dispatch plate in the /affinage chain, so the gate fires once — at affinage's publication boundary.

Rules

• Grading is code-grounded, not reviewer-asserted. CHANGES_REQUESTED is metadata, not a severity bump.
• Prefer fixing over pushing back. A valid, grounded nit whose fix is contained (fix-cost-now: contained — a few lines or a localized refactor) goes to /cure as a Low finding tagged [from-comment:<id>]; do not draft a push-back for it. Reserve ## Reviewer-rejected for claims that are wrong/ungrounded or whose fix is a lot of work (moderate/sprawling/structural). See ../age/references/voice.md.
• Never auto-apply fixes from /affinage itself. Code fixes go through /cure; merge conflicts go through /melt.
• Never post a GitHub reply without approval. Reply posting is gated by default (§Handoff reply-approval gate); only --auto posts autonomously. A Needs-investigation reply must name the follow-up test or exploration and offer to run it (/pasteurize or /briesearch) before posting — never a blind acknowledgement.
• Fresh /age runs only on standalone invocations (no upstream handoff_context) and only when --no-age is absent. Chained runs never re-review the diff.
• Merge conflicts are resolved through /melt, not by hand. gh pr checkout to materialise conflicts is allowed — it neither opens nor updates the PR. After resolution, affinage's terminal /plate owns the verified commit and push.
• /affinage owns terminal publication. The chained /cure suppresses its own /plate (keyed on source_skill: /affinage); after a clean cure, /affinage posts every reply and then dispatches /plate to update the existing PR — or, with --open-pr, apply the explicit-choice and review-shape policy before publishing a new PR. Replies always precede plate: no final write lands after publication.
• Every posted reply ends with the literal agent on behalf of <handle> attribution via skills/affinage/scripts/affinage.pyz post-reply, where <handle> is resolved from RESPOND_GH_HANDLE → gh api user --jq .login → git config user.name. Never call gh api directly to post.
• Idempotent re-runs: skip threads where the latest comment is from the resolved handle. The REST /comments endpoint does not expose thread resolution, so honest idempotency relies on the latest-comment-from-self heuristic; switch to GraphQL reviewThreads if cross-session resolution-state visibility becomes required.
• CI-sourced findings get no reply (no reviewer to notify).
• Apply the shared voice kernel (../age/references/voice.md): name confidence as certain | speculating | don't know; agree when no findings warrant grading.

References

• skills/age/SKILL.md — review pipeline, dimensions, sub-agent gate, report shape.
• ../age/references/dimensions.md — per-dimension rubrics and severity computation.
• skills/cure/SKILL.md — apply pipeline, --auto --stake floors, handoff context shape.
• ../cure/references/selection.md — selection verbs and composition.
• skills/melt/SKILL.md — merge-conflict resolution cascade (mergiraf → rerere → kdiff3).
• ../cheese/references/handoff-gate.md — gate primitives.
• python3 skills/affinage/scripts/affinage.pyz post-reply — reply posting with agent on behalf of <handle> attribution.
• python3 skills/affinage/scripts/affinage.pyz pr-status — PR status fetcher.

Agent resolution

Resolve each dispatch through ../cheese/references/agent-resolution.md.

Work	Preferred types	Permissions/isolation	Minimum power	Effort	Fallback
Triage review claims and CI evidence	reviewer	read-only, fresh-context	powerful	high	compatible reviewer, then general

The canonical affinage report carries the shared agent_resolution block.