elephant-goldfish

Check your assumptions before you ship.

An assistant reviewing its own work already knows why each choice seemed right. elephant-goldfish brings a fresh reviewer into Codex to question a design, investigate a bug, or inspect a change. It reviews the evidence without inheriting the working conversation.

Elephant and goldfish in a balanced charcoal and gold square

Before you build

Challenge an idea, clarify the requirements, and find unanswered questions in a design before committing to an approach.

When a bug resists a fix

Give a fresh reviewer the symptoms and reproduction. Compare its diagnosis with yours before making another change.

Before you commit

Review the exact change you intend to ship. Get findings tied to evidence, with a clear account of what was checked.

How it works

A fresh view of the same evidence

  1. Elephant

    Keeps the project history, decisions, and working conversation.

  2. The handoff

    Sends the question and evidence. Leaves out its preferred answer.

  3. Goldfish

    Starts fresh and checks what the evidence supports.

The history stays with the Elephant. The evidence travels to the reviewer.

A revision gets a new review

  1. Review

    A finding points to a concrete problem in this version.

  2. Verify and revise

    The Elephant checks the finding and makes an authorized repair.

  3. Review again

    A fresh Goldfish examines the new version without the earlier verdict.

The default limit is two revision rounds. Unresolved findings remain visible when the loop stops.

Try it on your next change

After installing the plugin, open your repository in Codex and ask:

Review my staged changes with elephant-goldfish.
Report findings without editing files.

Sources and attribution

Dave Rensin introduced the Elephant-Goldfish model. Vladyslav Shvedov published the five upstream workflows under the MIT license. Oliver Newth adapted them for this Codex plugin.

This is an independent adaptation. The bundle preserves the upstream MIT license and copyright notice. Its research notes document the adaptation.