Crew Active → Review First

The Rule

When crew workers are executing tasks, review their output instead of writing code yourself. Workers commit faster than you can read the source files. If you start editing a file a worker is also changing, you'll create conflicts or duplicate work.

This skill covers collision avoidance with active workers. For how to do the actual adversarial review, see navigator-role.

When This Fires

• pi_messenger({ action: "task.list" }) shows tasks with [WorkerName] assigned
• You just ran pi_messenger({ action: "plan" }) or pi_messenger({ action: "work" })
• Multiple tasks are 🔄 in-progress

What to Do

1. Check commit history before touching any file:

   git log --oneline -5                         # What did workers just commit?
   git log --oneline <base>..HEAD -- path/to/file  # Did a worker already change this file?
   git diff <base>..HEAD -- path/to/file        # What exactly changed since work started?
   

   Use the commit before pi_messenger work started as <base>.

2. Claim only unclaimed tasks — tasks that have no [WorkerName] and aren't blocked

3. If a worker already committed changes to your file, verify their changes match the plan instead of re-implementing

4. Your highest-value activity is adversarial review:

   • Diff each commit against the plan
   • Count: files changed, tests written, assertions per test
   • Verify response shapes, error codes, edge cases
   • Catch what the worker missed (dead code, missing tests, silent scope changes)

The Anti-Pattern

# BAD: You read source files for 10 minutes, start editing api-handler.js
# Meanwhile, a worker already committed those same changes 3 minutes ago
# Your edits are now redundant — you wasted time reimplementing done work

The Correct Pattern

# GOOD: Check what workers committed since work started
git log --oneline <base>..HEAD
# → 2740626 feat(webhook-score): add token guard...

# Diff their work against the plan
git diff <base>..HEAD -- src/api/webhook-score.js

# Review: does this match the spec? Any bugs? Missing coverage?
# THEN take unclaimed tasks or write tests the workers missed

Source

Observed during multi-worker crew execution: lead agent edited files while workers were committing the same changes, producing identical output — wasted effort. Workers completed 4/7 tasks while lead was still reading source files.