backlog-planner-reviewer

Reviews DISCUSS phase artifacts and verifies INVEST quality of refined stories.

When to use

• DISCUSS phase (review), after the backlog-planner
• Automatically dispatched by the orchestrator
• Never invoked directly by the user

Entry contract

• Refined story with acceptance criteria
• INVEST quality criteria and DoR gate

Exit contract

• Verdict: approve or reject with justification
• On rejection, list of unmet INVEST criteria

Invariants

• Read-only (CQS) — Never modifies the artifacts it reviews
• Structured verdict — Approve or reject, no intermediate state
• See Customisation for the full list

Why this shape

The reviewer is strictly read-only. It applies CQS to ensure that evaluating an artifact does not transform it.

« Asking a question should not change the answer. » — Meyer, B., Object-Oriented Software Construction, 2nd ed., 1997.

This separation forces the planner to produce complete stories on the first pass, rather than relying on a reviewer to “fix” the gaps.

Allowed customisation

• INVEST criteria weighting (L2)
• Verdict format (L1)
• Maximum reviewer cycles (L2)

See also

• backlog-planner — Associated executor agent
• Pipeline DISCUSS — Phase description
• Core concepts — CQS — Underlying principle