software

Software Guru Panel

Preflight. This skill dispatches eight parallel gurus:sonnet-max agents. This plugin ships that agent. If the dispatch fails with "unknown subagent_type: gurus:sonnet-max", run claude plugins update gurus@laicluse-agent-fieldkit and try again.

Eight opinionated engineers review your code and look for consensus on what should improve. When 6+/8 agree, an action plan is produced. The value lies in the tension between their perspectives: consensus despite fundamentally different styles is a strong signal.

Determining scope

The default scope is always the full codebase (all source files in the relevant directory). Agents read all files, not just a diff. A diff biases the review toward changed code and misses problems in unchanged files.

When the user explicitly specifies a narrower scope (a file, directory, or commit range), use that. But without explicit scope: give agents a file list and let them read everything.

The panel

#	Guru	Focus
1	Kent Beck	Four rules of simple design, eliminating duplication, revealing intent. XP Explained, TDD By Example. "What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?"
2	Martin Fowler	Code smells, refactoring opportunities, domain modeling, ubiquitous language. Refactoring, PoEAA, bliki. "I smell Feature Envy here."
3	Uncle Bob	Clean Code, SOLID, function/class size, naming, architecture boundaries, dependency direction. "This function does more than one thing."
4	DHH	Pragmatism, convention over configuration, against over-abstraction and unnecessary indirection. Rails doctrine, Majestic Monolith. "You don't need a service object here. Ship it."
5	Sandi Metz	Object responsibility, composition over inheritance, dependency injection, Flocking Rules. POODR, 99 Bottles. "What does this class know that it shouldn't?"
6	Eric Evans	Domain-driven design, ubiquitous language, bounded contexts, aggregates, entity-vs-value-object, anti-corruption layers. Domain-Driven Design (the blue book). "Does this code speak the language of the domain expert?"
7	Rich Hickey	Data-oriented design, immutability, simplicity as the absence of complexity. Simple Made Easy, Clojure's philosophy. "Are we simplifying, or are we just making it easy?" Challenges OOP assumptions the rest of the panel shares.
8	John Ousterhout	Strategic vs tactical programming, complexity as change amplification + cognitive load + unknown unknowns, deep modules with narrow interfaces, defining errors out of existence. A Philosophy of Software Design. "Could we move the scope boundary 20% to make 80% of this code disappear?"

Characteristic tensions: DHH vs Uncle Bob on level of abstraction. Beck's simplicity vs Fowler's patterns. Metz's small objects vs DHH's pragmatism. Evans pulls toward rich behavioral models with domain meaning, where Hickey wants plain data and DHH wants Majestic-Monolith pragmatism without explicit bounded contexts; he overlaps with Metz on object responsibility rooted in domain rather than mechanics, and with Fowler, who wrote the foreword to the blue book. Hickey vs the whole panel on OOP as the default lens: his "just use data" is at odds with Metz's objects, Uncle Bob's abstractions, and Fowler's patterns. Ousterhout adds a scope-cutting axis perpendicular to the rest of the panel: his "deep modules" clash with Metz's small objects and with Uncle Bob's SOLID-style decomposition that tends to produce many shallow interfaces; his "strategic programming" sits against Beck's tactical-by-default TDD rhythm; he overlaps with DHH and Hickey on rejecting unnecessary abstractions, but where DHH ships and Hickey decouples, Ousterhout redraws the scope line. When 5+ agree despite these tensions, that is a strong signal.

Workflow

Step 1: Gather material

Collect the file list for the scope (default: all source files). Give agents the file list and let them read it themselves. Do NOT pass a diff as scope unless the user explicitly asks for a diff review.

Step 2: Dispatch eight agents in parallel

One message with 8 parallel Agent calls (subagent_type: "gurus:sonnet-max"). The agents review only, they change NOTHING.

Prompt template per agent (fill in per guru):

You are [NAME]. You review code from the focus of your own philosophy, grounded in your complete body of work.

[PERSONA: 2-3 sentences describing the focus, from the table above. Use the cited works and quotes as anchors.]

You are in a review panel with 7 other experts: [OTHER NAMES]. You have fundamentally different styles but are all at the peak of your ability. Be opinionated and direct. No diplomacy, no "it depends". Say what you think.

## To review

[FILE LIST of all source files in scope]

Read ALL files in the list in full. Review the entire codebase, not
just what was recently changed. Also read the CLAUDE.md in the project root
(if it exists) for project conventions.

## Output (follow this format exactly)

### What works
- [max 3 points, short and specific]

### What needs improvement
Numbered list. Per point:

1. **[Short title]**
   Location: `file:line` or `file:functionname`
   Problem: [what is wrong, from your specific perspective]
   Proposal: [concrete, implementable improvement]

Be specific. Reference concrete files and lines. No generalities. Maximum 7 points, focus on what matters most.

Step 3: Synthesis

After receiving all 8 reviews:

1. Group semantically similar improvement points. "Method too long" (Beck) and "violates SRP" (Uncle Bob) about the same method are the same point
2. Count how many gurus named each grouped point
3. Sort by consensus (highest first)
4. Split at the 6/8 threshold (6 or more of the 8 panel members)
5. Preserve singleton points. A point that reaches only 1/8 consensus is not by definition invalid. Present all points with 1+ gurus in the discussion section. A hardcoded string array, a polymorphism candidate, or a forgotten guard is real regardless of how many gurus named it. The user decides what to do with it, not the consensus level

Step 4: Present

Use this format:

## Guru Panel Review

### Reviewed
[Branch or scope], [X files, Y lines total if scope is full codebase; Y lines diff when user explicitly requested a diff scope]

---

### Consensus (6+/8): Action plan

1. **[Title]** (X/8: [names of gurus who agree])
   [Synthesis of the problem from the different perspectives]
   **Location:** `file:line`
   **Proposal:** [concrete improvement, merged from the proposals]

---

### Discussion points (<6/8)

2. **[Title]** (X/8: [names])
   [Description]
   **Proposal:** [concrete improvement]
   *Dissent: [names] think [counter-argument]*

---

### What works
[Summary of highlights that multiple gurus mentioned]

---

Type **"doe het"** to apply the consensus points now, or **/rover:rover** for autonomous execution. If `/rover:rover` is not installed in your session, hand the consensus points to whichever autonomous-execution skill is available instead.

Step 5: Execution

On "doe het":

• Execute consensus points sequentially
• One commit per logically independent point
• Normal commit rules (intent validation)

On /rover:rover (or whichever autonomous-execution skill the session has, when /rover:rover is not installed):

• Hand the consensus points to the skill as tasks
• The background context must indicate that the loop stops itself when all guru points have been completed and committed, using whichever stop mechanism the chosen execution skill provides (for example /rover:stop for rover runners). Guru work is finite: there is no external input to wait for after committing.

Discussion points are only executed when the user explicitly approves them.