fix(review-pipeline,stage-commit-push,codex-contract-test-review): commit before editing

[ultimatile]

Summary

review-pipeline's Phase 0 and Phase 0.5 edited files and re-ran their gate without ever committing. Under reimre the content those loops edit is the whole implementation: implement hands off without committing unless commits were explicitly authorized, and the branch's first commit was made by Phase 1. So every fix those two phases made overwrote that implementation in place, with no ref, no commit, and no reflog entry holding it.

Both phases now commit at entry and inside their fix loops, and Phase 3 commits its contract tests before the step that revises them.

Closes #208

Changes

• Phase 0 commits at entry and after each fix has been re-audited, so the next fix never overwrites the previous one.
• Phase 0.5 commits at entry, and its fix loop now runs the shared substeps every other fix loop runs — check for a recurring topic, fix, audit, commit, re-review, preserve the topics for the next check, re-triage — rather than an inline copy of them. That is where its own commit comes from, and it also gains the topic-preservation and re-triage steps its inline copy omitted.
• Phase 3 commits the contract tests before the review step that revises them.
• Phase 0.5 no longer opens by declaring that it runs after the done-check loop. A run entering at Phase 0.5 has not run that loop, and land-via-integration-branch runs the pipeline from Phase 0.5 forward.
• stage-commit-push's clean-tree arm states its outcome — it makes no change — rather than "stop", which read either as ending the invocation or as ending whatever invoked it.
• The shared substeps name neither the phases that run them nor Phase 2's two departures from them, which are the re-review command Phase 2 substitutes and its triage of new comments only. Phase 2 already states both at its own step.
• Phase 1 measures the state /codex-review needs as committed, which is what that skill's base mode resolves a merge base against.
• stage-commit-push no longer claims it is used only inside review-fix loops, which its own entry-position call sites contradict.

Impact

• stage-commit-push gains four call sites. Its clean-tree rewording also resolves the same ambiguity at the two call sites that predate this change, in Phase 1 and Phase 3.
• The rule that no commit may be made on the repository's default branch is stated over every /stage-commit-push, so the new call sites inherit it with no new text.
• The rule closing the pipeline on a halted done-check already bound Phase 0 and Phase 0.5 with "do not fix, do not commit, do not re-review". That prohibition was vacuous there and is now load-bearing.
• Inserting steps renumbered the steps after them within two phases. land-via-integration-branch, reimre, and README.md name the pipeline's phases but never its step numbers, so the renumbering reaches no reference outside the pipeline.

Verification

The repository ships Markdown skill bodies and has no test suite, so the gates are the audit chain.

• done-check ran six times over the change, applying quality-list and authoritative-text-rules through fresh-context auditors each time. Every concern it raised is either resolved in this branch's second commit or carried in Notes.
• /code-review high through the headless lane returned no findings.
• codex exec review against the branch's merge base with main returned no actionable regression.
• pre-commit run reports mdformat passing on every touched file; the repository's ruff hooks have no files to check in this diff.

Notes

• Phase 0.5's fix loop states that its gate re-run uses the effort chosen when the gate first ran. That restates code-review-gate's own rule holding effort fixed, and it stays until code-review-gate: the effort rule does not match what effort selects #219 settles that rule's scope: the gate fixes effort "across a PR's iterations", while this loop runs before a pull request exists.
• implement carries the same unheld-content gap between its own units, and this change does not reach it.
• The cap of one revise-and-re-review cycle is stated in codex-contract-test-review and twice more in review-pipeline, and caller and callee each own a cycle, so the caller's branch either runs a second revision or never fires. codex-contract-test-review: caller and callee each own the revise cycle #218 tracks it.
• implement emits a conventional commit message that nothing on this path reads, so the new entry commit derives its own instead. stage-commit-push, implement: the commit-message rules have no owner #217 tracks which skill should own the rules for writing one.

[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

The changes are internally consistent across the updated skills and directly address the reported “uncommitted overwrite” failure mode without introducing conflicting instructions in the touched sections.

Pull request overview

This PR tightens the review automation skills to ensure pipeline iterations never overwrite uncommitted work by inserting commit points at phase entry and within fix loops, and by clarifying a few ambiguous handoffs between skills.

Changes:

• Update review-pipeline Phase 0 and Phase 0.5 to run /stage-commit-push at entry and within their fix-loop flow so each iteration is preserved as a commit before the next edit cycle.
• Adjust Phase 3 sequencing so contract tests are committed before the contract-test review step that may revise them.
• Clarify stage-commit-push “clean-tree” behavior text, tweak codex-contract-test-review wording, and bump the plugin version.

File summaries

File	Description
skills/stage-commit-push/SKILL.md	Removes “used only in review-fix loops” claim and clarifies the no-op routing outcome (“make no change”).
skills/review-pipeline/SKILL.md	Inserts /stage-commit-push at Phase 0 / 0.5 entry and uses shared fix-loop substeps; commits contract tests before contract-test review in Phase 3.
skills/codex-contract-test-review/SKILL.md	Clarifies the “clean” handoff wording back to the caller.
.claude-plugin/marketplace.json	Bumps metadata.version from 2026.9.2 to 2026.9.3.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 4/4 changed files
• Comments generated: 0
• Review effort level: Lite

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