Crafter Review

Adversarial review before a push or a send. A range of commits is frozen, cut into units, and every unit is read by review lenses - one claude --print process each - in a fixed order of gates. Each lens asks one question and reports defects with their evidence; a gate passes when its lenses find nothing, and the last gate is the owner, who approves the exact frozen hash. A static lens's clean read of a unit is kept and reused only once three rounds have read it clean.

It reviews three kinds of artifact:

• commits: a commit range of one of your own repositories, before the push;
• series: a kernel patch series as git format-patch exports it, with its cover letter, before the send;
• reply: a mailing-list reply draft.

Install

crafter-review ships as a Flatpak with its own git, Node and ripgrep, so every machine reviews with the same tools.

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists catcrafts https://flatpak.catcrafts.net/catcrafts.flatpakrepo
flatpak install catcrafts net.catcrafts.CrafterReview
alias crafter-review='flatpak run net.catcrafts.CrafterReview'

The machine provides the rest:

The Claude Code CLI	Proprietary, not bundled. Found through CLAUDE_BIN or REVIEW_GATES_CLAUDE_BIN, the PATH, an editor extension's bundled binary, ~/.claude/local or ~/.local/bin.
Seats	A dotenv file with CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN1..6 or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY1..6: --env-file, else $SEATS_ENV_FILE, else the working directory's .env when it holds a seat or a placement setting, else ~/.config/crafter-review/env. Its seats go over the environment's; with none, your own login. The file's REVIEW_GATES_* placement settings count too. crafter-review seats probes them; every driver on the machine shares one seat board.
Chromium	For a lens with the browser: crafter-review browser install, once.
A local Supabase stack	For a lens with the database (supabase start, or the repository's own bring-up). The sql helper speaks the Postgres protocol itself; every call is one transaction, rolled back.
gpg	Only for signed commits: freeze reads the signatures through gnupg's keyboxd socket.

Set a repository up

From the repository's toplevel:

crafter-review init
crafter-review config        # edit .review-gates/config.json until it prints no problem

init writes .review-gates/config.json from the template when there is none, adds .review-gates/push/ and .review-gates/trees/ to .gitignore, and writes the /prepush skill to .claude/skills/prepush/. The skill is generated: it ignores itself in git, and a later init refreshes it. init writes nothing it did not make, unless --force.

.review-gates/config.json is committed. It says:

• what freeze checks: authors, aiTrailers, requireSigned, and the branch a range is measured against (base, rangeFrom);
• modes.<name>: the kind of artifact, the lenses it runs and their effort. Every lens is off until a mode lists it; run --mode picks one;
• lenses.<name>: the environment a lens gets (none, browser, supabase or browser+supabase) and, if the repository has one, its section - a file of this repository's own appended to the lens's charter;
• functional, slots, supabase: how the application is started and reached, one stack or several, and where its database answers;
• allowDirty, gate0: the tracked paths the stack rewrites, and the commands Gate 0 runs by hand.

crafter-review doc config prints the template; crafter-review doc prepush prints the procedure the /prepush skill follows.

Run a review

crafter-review freeze --slug <branch>     # Gate 0: the checks, the export, the hash - and the run line
crafter-review run …                      # the line freeze printed (run-line.txt), from a detached shell

Exit codes: 0 SEND-READY, 1 FIX FIRST, 2 run the same line again (INCOMPLETE, PARTIAL or CONFIRMING), 3 preflight. Every finding, note and coverage entry is in the dump, gate-state/commits-<hash8>-run-<n>.json. crafter-review stop --hash <hash8> kills a run's passes and writes its dump.

A directory can review other repositories: freeze --repo <path> --out <dir> --worktree, then the printed run line. The config, the seats and the records are the reviewing directory's.

The kernel modes take --subsystem <name>, whose journal (ledger.md, captures/) is the lenses' evidence, and the trees --trees names; lore.kernel.org is read through utilities/lore.py in the working directory. --reviewers "A B,C D" adds one maintainer persona per reviewer, calibrated on their own lore mail; clean gates without a persona pass are GATES CLEAN, not SEND-READY.

The lenses

Gates run in order, and each must pass before the next starts. The owner is the last gate of every mode.

commits - a commit range:

Gate	Lens	Asks
1 Approach	repo-better-solution	the right mechanism, layer and commit shape? compatible with what users have?
2 Functional	repo-functional (needs the browser)	in the running application, does the range do what its code and messages say, and leave the flows next to it working?
3 Proof	repo-bug-prover	a demonstrated defect in the range's code
3 Proof	repo-security	a demonstrated gap in a protection the repository promises
4 Commit truth	repo-facts	every claim in every commit message and changed document, proven or gone

series - a kernel patch series:

Gate	Lens	Asks
1 Structure	better-solution	should the series be replaced: another mechanism, layer or shape?
2 Code	code-quality	the defects a careful subsystem maintainer finds: interactions, error and teardown paths, style
2 Code	minimalism	can it be done with less: fewer lines, hunks, patches, files?
2 Code	bug-prover	a demonstrable defect in the code the series produces
3 Artifact truth	facts	every claim in the cover letter, the messages and the notes, disproved or proven
3 Artifact truth	consistency	contradictions between the artifacts, the ledger and what was said on-list
3 Artifact truth	process-docs	the series against the kernel's own in-tree process documentation
3 Artifact truth	etiquette	how it lands with the humans on the thread: tone, attribution, conventions
3 Artifact truth	conciseness	the shorter text, every dropped clause accounted for
4 Persona	maintainer-persona	one named reviewer's reading of the final artifact (--reviewers)

reply - a mailing-list reply: Gate 3, artifact truth, with facts, etiquette, consistency and conciseness, then the persona gate.

Commands

Command
init, config, doc	set a repository up; the merged config and its problems; the shipped texts
freeze	Gate 0: the checks, the export, the hash, the run line; --verify at push time
run	the gates of a mode (--mode); --dry-run launches nothing
stop	stop a run: its passes are killed, the dump written
seats, slots	every seat probed; how many stacks fit in free memory
browser install	the Chromium the Playwright MCP server drives
sql, totp, inventory	the helpers a lens runs; the partition of an artifact into units

License

crafter-review is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 only (LICENSE).

Vendored files in the lib directory maintain their own license.

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2026 Catcrafts®