BMAD-METHOD/src/bmm-skills/4-implementation/bmad-code-review/automation-mode.md

Automation Mode

You are running unattended inside a bmad-auto orchestrator session: a fresh review context with no human watching. A deterministic program spawned you to review one story's changes against its spec, will verify your artifacts on disk (spec status, sprint status, test runs), and will kill this session after your final turn. These rules override conversational behavior everywhere in this workflow.

Identity & I/O contract

• $BMAD_AUTO_RUN_DIR and $BMAD_AUTO_TASK_ID are set in your environment.

• Your result file is $BMAD_AUTO_RUN_DIR/tasks/$BMAD_AUTO_TASK_ID/result.json. Writing it is the LAST action of the workflow (step-04 automation branch). Schema:

  {
    "workflow": "code-review",
    "clean": <true only when zero actionable findings remain AND you set the spec status to "done" on disk — see rule 8>,
    "patched": <count of patch findings applied this session>,
    "deferred": <count of defer findings appended to deferred-work>,
    "dismissed": <count dismissed as noise — recorded to the Review Ledger, not dropped>,
    "escalations": [{"type": "<kind>", "severity": "CRITICAL|PREFERENCE",
                     "detail": "<one or two sentences>"}]
  }
  

• CRITICAL escalations pause the whole run for a human (correctness or security decisions you cannot safely make). PREFERENCE is logged and the run continues — prefer it when the work can proceed.

Behavior rules

1. Never HALT for input. Never ask the user anything. No greeting, no menus, no "what next" offers.
2. The invocation argument IS the review target: the path to a spec file. Set {spec_file} to it, read baseline_commit from its frontmatter, set {review_mode} = "full", and resolve {story_key} from the spec's filename/frontmatter against {sprint_status} (exact numeric match on the first two segments). Skip the rest of the step-01 cascade and the step-01 CHECKPOINT.
   • Sweep bundles: a spec filename matching spec-dw-* is a deferred-work bundle from a sweep run — it has no sprint-status entry. Set {story_key} = null and review as usual against the spec.
3. Diff source: all changes — tracked and untracked — since baseline_commit. If the diff is empty, write result.json with clean: false and a CRITICAL escalation (type: empty-diff) and end your turn.
4. Oversized diff (>3000 lines): do not ask about chunking. Review the full diff, and record a PREFERENCE escalation (type: oversized-diff) noting the line count.
5. Triage (step-03): apply the automation rule — a decision_needed finding whose fix is actually unambiguous becomes patch; anything genuinely needing human judgment becomes defer with reason "auto-mode: needs human decision" AND an entry in escalations (CRITICAL if it concerns correctness or security of the new code, PREFERENCE otherwise).
6. Spec defects (step-03): when a finding's root cause is an error in the spec itself — the code faithfully implements something the spec got wrong — never patch around it silently. Root cause inside <frozen-after-approval>: escalate CRITICAL (type: spec-defect) — the frozen intent is human-owned. Root cause outside the frozen block: patch the code to the evidently correct behavior, append an entry to the spec's ## Spec Change Log recording the finding, the amendment, and the known-bad state avoided, and record a PREFERENCE escalation so a human can revisit the call.
7. Act (step-04): write findings to the spec file as usual; apply EVERY patch finding without asking; append defer findings to the deferred-work file following the format in ./deferred-work-format.md; skip the "Next steps" menu entirely.
8. Status updates (step-04 section 6) run exactly as written: spec status (frontmatter status:) and sprint-status sync. clean: true in result.json must mean you set the spec to done — never claim clean without the status updates on disk. When {story_key} is null (sweep bundle): skip the sprint-status sync only; the spec frontmatter update stays mandatory. New defer findings still append DW entries to the deferred-work file — the running sweep ignores entries created after its triage; a later sweep picks them up.
9. Never commit, never push. The orchestrator commits after verifying.