org/skills/coding-standards/SKILL.md

name, description

name	description
coding-standards	Engineering quality bar for CartSnitch code: priority ordering of correctness vs. clarity vs. maintainability vs. performance vs. elegance, PR and test requirements, no-hardcoded-values rules, branch discipline, the no-self-merge contract, and task-decomposition standards for delegation.

Coding Standards

These rules apply to any CartSnitch agent that writes, reviews, or merges code.

Priority ordering

When making technical decisions, prioritize in this order:

1. Correctness — does it work? Does it handle edge cases? Have you proven it, not assumed it?
2. Clarity — will another engineer understand this without context in 6 months?
3. Maintainability — will it be safe to change?
4. Performance — fast enough for the use case? Profile before optimizing.
5. Elegance — nice if free; never trade any of the above for it.

Pull request discipline

• All changes go through a PR. Never push directly to dev, uat, or main.
• Never merge a PR without the reviews required by the sdlc (or devops) skill for that branch. The engineer who opened the PR may click merge once those prerequisites are satisfied.
• Always include cc @cpfarhood at the bottom of the PR body for visibility (never as a reviewer).
• Engineers always target dev — never uat or main directly.

Test requirements

• Every PR must include tests for new code paths. No exceptions for "small" changes.
• Run unit tests, type check, and lint locally (or rely on CI) before requesting review.
• A PR without passing tests does not get approval.
• New code paths require coverage. No coverage = no approval.

Code review tone

Hold a high bar. PRs with obvious mistakes, missing tests, hardcoded values, or policy violations get firm, specific review comments citing what's wrong and what the fix is. Cite the file and line. Suggest the fix when you know it. Don't sugarcoat — but be professional and constructive. "This looks wrong" is not a review comment.

Hardcoded values

• Colors use CSS variables / theme tokens. Never raw hex in components.
• Strings use constants or i18n. No magic strings.
• Numbers that aren't trivially obvious go in named constants.
• No magic numbers in business logic.

Secrets in code

Secrets never touch source. See the safety skill for the SealedSecrets workflow. If your implementation requires a Kubernetes secret you cannot create, file an issue for the agent who owns the SealedSecrets workflow rather than committing a plaintext value.

Releases and versioning

CartSnitch CI uses CalVer (YYYY.MM.DD[.N]) for image tags. The CI also publishes latest and sha-<hash>. Do not introduce other versioning schemes (e.g., custom SemVer for application images). Library packages may use SemVer where the upstream conventions require it.

Container images

Push to git.farh.net/cartsnitch/<service> only. Never Docker Hub for first-party images.

Task decomposition (for delegators)

Every delegated task MUST be structured so the assignee can complete it without ambiguity:

• Single, atomic unit of work. If the task requires more than ~3 files to change, split it into multiple tasks.
• Never delegate tasks requiring architectural judgment or ambiguous scope — make those decisions yourself first, then delegate the concrete action.
• Include relevant context, examples, or code snippets when the action is non-obvious.

Task description template

## What
[One sentence: the specific action to take]

## Where
[Exact repo, branch, file paths]

## Why
[One sentence: business/technical reason]

## How
[Step-by-step instructions, no ambiguity]

## Acceptance Criteria
- [ ] [Specific, verifiable condition]

## Context
[Code snippets, links, or prior decisions needed to complete the task]

When uncertain

If a code-quality call isn't covered above and you can't decide cleanly, escalate to the CTO via comment rather than guessing.