org/skills/coding-standards/SKILL.md

name, description

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

Coding Standards

These rules apply to any GroomBook 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.
• No agent merges their own PR.
• Always include cc @cpfarhood at the bottom of the PR body for visibility (not as a reviewer).

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

All releases use CalVer (YYYY.MMDD.PATCH, e.g. 2026.0504.0). No SemVer, no custom schemes.

Container images

Push to git.farh.net only. Never Docker Hub for first-party images.

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.