Review Technical Work You Did Not Implement
Shashank Agarwal
A reviewer can assess work they did not implement when the review packet connects the intended behavior to the actual artifact and its evidence.
Quick answer: Start with the user-visible change, inspect the relevant implementation boundary and review the checks that could reveal a meaningful failure. Ask for missing context where necessary. Keep the conclusion scoped to what was reviewed rather than implying that a cursory inspection proves the whole system correct.
Ask for a compact packet
For an illustrative agent prompt change, the reviewer needs the targeted failure, the candidate behavior and comparable case results. A long conversation log alone is difficult to use.
| Artifact | Review purpose |
|---|---|
| Problem statement | Establish the intended change |
| Relevant diff or configuration | Identify what actually changed |
| Acceptance conditions | Define required behavior |
| Baseline and candidate evidence | Inspect whether the change helped |
| Regressions and limits | Understand tradeoffs |
| Operating plan | Identify rollout and recovery ownership |
These are proposed review inputs, not a guarantee that passing checks eliminate defects.
Inspect a decisive failure path
If the change concerns caller corrections, inspect an actual controlled case where the preference changes before commitment. Confirm that the operation reflects the new intent.
A final answer that sounds correct is weaker evidence than the appropriate operation record when the task involves state changes.
Challenge one assumption
Ask which dependency or condition the test held fixed. If the tool result was mocked, establish what the test can conclude about the deployed integration.
Keep an unmodified ordinary case to detect side effects.
Record the disposition
State which scope is accepted, which evidence is missing and what revision is needed. Avoid a generic approval that conceals unresolved conditions.
The implementation owner should not have to guess whether the reviewer approved the goal, the code or the release. A bounded review makes that distinction explicit.
I'm Shashank Agarwal, founder and CEO of Noveum AI and creator of API.market. See the acceptance-criteria guide and evaluation-report guide for ways to make a technical decision reviewable.
Follow my work on LinkedIn. Drafted with AI assistance.
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