PR Review Chamber Skill

Capture, organize, and retrieve knowledge from PR reviews within project memory palaces.

When To Use

• Capturing PR review knowledge for future reference
• Building review pattern libraries from past reviews

When NOT To Use

• Quick self-reviews of trivial changes
• Automated CI checks that cover the review scope

Overview

The Review Chamber is a dedicated room within each project palace that stores valuable knowledge extracted from PR reviews. It transforms ephemeral PR discussions into persistent, searchable institutional memory.

Room Structure

review-chamber/
├── decisions/      # Architectural choices from PR discussions
├── patterns/       # Recurring issues and their solutions
├── standards/      # Quality bar examples and coding conventions
└── lessons/        # Post-mortems and learnings

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Workflow Phases

Phase 1: Knowledge Detection

After a PR review completes, evaluate findings for knowledge capture:

## Knowledge Detection Checklist

For each finding from sanctum:pr-review, evaluate:

- [ ] **Novelty**: Is this a new pattern or first occurrence?
- [ ] **Applicability**: Will this affect future PRs in this area?
- [ ] **Durability**: Is this architectural (capture) or tactical (skip)?
- [ ] **Connectivity**: Does it link to existing palace rooms?

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Phase 2: Classification

Route findings to appropriate subrooms:

Finding Type	Target Room	Criteria
Architectural choice	decisions/	BLOCKING and architectural context
Recurring issue	patterns/	Seen before or likely to recur
Quality example	standards/	Exemplifies coding standards
Learning/insight	lessons/	Retrospective or post-mortem

Phase 3: Capture

Create structured entry with:

---
source_pr: "#42 - Add authentication"
date: 2025-01-15
participants: [author, reviewer1, reviewer2]
palace_location: review-chamber/decisions
related_rooms: [workshop/auth-patterns, library/security-adr]
tags: [authentication, jwt, security]
---

## Decision Title

### Decision
Chose JWT tokens over server-side sessions.

### Context (from PR discussion)
- Reviewer asked: "Why not use sessions?"
- Author explained: stateless scaling requirements
- Discussion refined: added refresh token rotation

### Captured Knowledge
- **Pattern**: JWT + refresh tokens for stateless auth
- **Tradeoff**: Complexity vs. horizontal scaling
- **Application**: Use for all API authentication

### Connected Concepts
- [[auth-patterns]] - Updated with JWT best practices
- [[security-adr-003]] - Referenced this decision

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Phase 4: Integration

After capture, update related palace rooms:

1. Add bidirectional links to related entries
2. Update tags in project palace index
3. Notify if this contradicts existing entries

Usage Examples

Capture After PR Review

# Automatic: sanctum:pr-review triggers capture
/pr-review 42
# → Review posted to GitHub
# → Knowledge capture evaluates findings
# → Significant decisions stored in review-chamber

# Manual: Explicitly capture from PR
/review-room capture 42 --room decisions

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Search Past Decisions

# Find authentication decisions
/review-room search "authentication" --room decisions

# Find patterns in a specific area
/review-room search "error handling" --room patterns --tags api

# List recent entries
/review-room list --limit 10 --room standards

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Surface Relevant Knowledge

When starting work in a code area:

## Relevant Review Knowledge

Starting work in `auth/` directory...

**Past Decisions:**
- [#42] JWT token decision → decisions/jwt-over-sessions
- [#67] Rate limiting pattern → patterns/api-throttling

**Quality Standards:**
- [#55] Error response format → standards/api-errors

**Known Patterns:**
- [#38] Token refresh edge case → patterns/token-refresh-race

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Integration Points

With sanctum:pr-review

The review-chamber integrates after Phase 6 (Generate Report):

**Verification:** Run the command with `--help` flag to verify availability.
Phase 6: Generate Report
    ↓
[HOOK] Evaluate findings for knowledge capture
    ↓
    For each significant finding:
    ├── Classify into room type
    ├── Create ReviewEntry
    ├── Add to project palace
    └── Update connections
    ↓
Phase 7: Post to GitHub

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

With knowledge-intake

Uses the same evaluation framework:

Criterion	Weight	PR Review Application
Novelty	25%	New pattern or first occurrence
Applicability	30%	Affects future PRs in this area
Durability	20%	Architectural vs tactical
Connectivity	15%	Links to existing rooms
Authority	10%	Senior reviewer or domain expert

With knowledge-locator

Extends search to include review-chamber:

python scripts/palace_manager.py search "authentication" \
  --palace project-name \
  --room review-chamber \
  --type semantic

Verification: Run python --version to verify Python environment.

Evaluation Rubric

Worth Capturing (Score ≥ 60)

• Architectural decisions with documented rationale
• Recurring patterns seen in 2+ PRs
• Security/performance critical findings
• Domain knowledge that explains business logic
• Convention changes that affect future code

Skip (Score < 60)

• One-off tactical fixes
• Style preferences without rationale
• Obvious bugs without pattern
• External dependency issues
• Temporary workarounds

CLI Reference

# Capture knowledge from PR
/review-room capture <pr_number> [--room <room_type>] [--tags <tags>]

# Search review chamber
/review-room search "<query>" [--room <room_type>] [--tags <tags>]

# List entries
/review-room list [--room <room_type>] [--limit N]

# View entry details
/review-room view <entry_id>

# Export for documentation
/review-room export [--format markdown|json] [--room <room_type>]

# Statistics
/review-room stats [--palace <palace_id>]

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Best Practices

1. Capture decisions immediately - Context is freshest right after review
2. Link related entries - Build the knowledge graph
3. Use consistent tags - Enable cross-project discovery
4. Review periodically - Prune outdated entries
5. Surface proactively - Show relevant knowledge when starting related work

Module Reference

• See modules/capture-workflow.md for detailed capture process
• See modules/evaluation-criteria.md for knowledge worth assessment
• See modules/search-patterns.md for query optimization

Exit Criteria

• Knowledge detection checklist evaluated for each PR review finding; findings scoring ≥ 60 are captured, < 60 are skipped
• Each captured finding is routed to the correct room: decisions/, patterns/, standards/, or lessons/
• Every capture entry includes source_pr, date, palace_location, and at least one tag
• Bidirectional links added between the new entry and any related existing palace rooms after capture
• palace_manager.py search "<topic>" returns the captured entry when queried by its tags or content after storage