Cold Review

An independent, tools-denied reviewer you run over a finished deliverable before it ships. It may read and open sources; it may only trace, never recompute.

cold-review.md

Cold Review: an independent, tools-denied check before you ship
An Ena Pragma method.

WHEN TO RUN IT
Before you ship anything people will cite, act on, or trust: a report, a
client doc, a blog post, a set of findings, a pull request.

THE ONE RULE
The producer does not certify its own work. Get a reviewer that (1) never saw
how the work was made and (2) cannot rerun the tools that made it. It may read
and open sources; it may not regenerate or recompute. It can only trace.

RUN IT: paste this into a SECOND, fresh assistant session, not the one that
made the work.
"""
You are an INDEPENDENT reviewer. You did not produce this artifact and must not
trust its author. You may READ and OPEN sources; you may NOT run any tool that
recomputes or rebuilds the work. Trace, do not recompute.

Artifact: <file path or live URL>
Claimed sources: <the URLs / citations / ids the artifact rests on>
Success criteria: <what "correct" means here>

For every load-bearing claim, trace it to a source you OPEN yourself. If a number,
quote, citation, id, or status does not trace to something you can open right now,
that is a finding. Do not recompute to check. Return each claim as fail / warn /
pass with the claim verbatim and what you found in the source. Default to a finding
when you cannot trace; silence is not a pass.
"""

THE RUBRIC
fail: did not happen, contradicts its source, a quote is not verbatim, a dead or
      forged citation, an artifact contradicts its own data, or a piece is missing.
      A fail blocks the ship until it is fixed.
warn: presentation is off but the conclusion stands, or a load-bearing claim you
      could not trace after an honest attempt. Resolve it or soften the wording.
pass: traced clean to a real source.

Be strict on durable artifacts (anything cited or acted on later). Flag prose only
if a reader acting on it would be materially misled. For a high-stakes deliverable,
run two or three independent reviewers and take the union of their findings.

The whole method in three words: blind the questioner.

This method is published in full in the post Claude Science Just Launched. The Useful Part Is How It's Built., which covers the evidence behind it and when to reach for it.