temper

Harden your code before it ships. Temper runs four adversarial critics against your diff — catching logic errors, design drift, production risks, and coverage gaps at review time, not incident time.

It is the symmetric counterpart to whetstone: where whetstone critiques plans, temper critiques diffs.

Tempering is the hardening process applied after forging. The metal has been shaped — now we make sure it holds.

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What it does

Run /temper before committing or pushing. Temper reads your staged diff (or any diff you point it at), runs four critic personas against the code, and produces a structured review with severity ratings:

### Review report

| # | Critic      | Severity | Finding                                         | Recommendation                        |
|---|-------------|----------|-------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------|
| 1 | Correctness | 🔴       | Missing nil check on user.email before send()   | Add guard: if user.email is None: ...  |
| 2 | Risk        | 🟡       | New endpoint has no rate limiting               | Add @rate_limit decorator             |
| 3 | Coverage    | 🟢       | Happy path tested but empty-list case is not    | Add test for empty input              |

Blockers: 1
Significant: 1
Minor: 1

If blockers are found, temper gates the push until they're resolved.

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The four critics

Critic	Focus
Correctness	Logic errors, null dereferences, off-by-ones, unhandled errors
Design	Coupling, misleading names, duplication, premature complexity
Risk	Security vulnerabilities, data loss, breaking API changes, missing observability
Coverage	Untested paths, invalidated tests, untestable code

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Install

Quick start — one-liner (no clone needed)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ValentinFigue/temper/main/install.sh | bash -s global

Or clone first

git clone https://github.com/ValentinFigue/temper
cd temper && bash install.sh global

Local install (this project only)

bash install.sh

With proactive CLAUDE.md rules

Adds behavioral guidelines to your CLAUDE.md that teach Claude Code to proactively suggest /temper based on session scope, bonsai refactoring, and critical file patterns:

bash install.sh --claude-md          # local
bash install.sh global --claude-md   # global

No dependencies

No Python, npm, or build step required. Just bash and Claude Code.

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Usage

/temper                     Review staged changes (default)
/temper --diff=all          Review all changes since HEAD
/temper --diff=HEAD~3       Review last 3 commits
/temper --only=risk         Run only the Risk critic
/temper --skip=coverage     Run all critics except Coverage
/temper --severity=red      Report only blockers
/temper --target=src/auth.py  Scope to one file

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When the hook fires

The enforce-temper.sh PreToolUse hook blocks the following operations and asks you to run /temper first:

Operation	Condition
git push	Always (except --dry-run)
git commit	Staged diff > 200 lines or > 10 files, or critical path file matched
git merge	Merging into main / master / develop / trunk
git rebase -i	Range touches > 5 commits
git stash pop	Stash diff > 200 lines

Bypass: append # temper:skip to silence the temper hook, or # suite:skip to silence all suite hooks (temper, cairn, whetstone) at once.

git push origin main  # temper:skip
git push origin main  # suite:skip

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Configuration

Create temper.config in your project root (local) or ~/.claude/temper.config (global):

enabled: true
critics: correctness, design, risk, coverage
skip:
severity: red, yellow
diff: staged
auto_nudge_lines: 200
auto_nudge_files: 10
critical_paths: *auth*, *permission*, *token*, migrations/, *alembic*, *.sql, *schema*, *secret*, *credential*, *.env

CLI

temper status                          Show install state and effective config
temper enable  [local|global]          Enable temper
temper disable [local|global]          Disable temper
temper config set auto_nudge_lines=300
temper config set critics=correctness,risk --global
temper config reset local
temper update                          Re-download latest temper.md
temper uninstall [global] [--claude-md]

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Two-tier gate model

Tier 1 — Proactive (CLAUDE.md rules) When installed with --claude-md, behavioral guidelines teach Claude Code to suggest /temper before you even reach a git command — based on session scope, critical file patterns, and bonsai refactoring activity. These are soft instructions, not hard blocks.

Tier 2 — Reactive (enforce-temper.sh hook) The hook is the hard gate. It intercepts high-risk git operations and blocks them until you acknowledge the risk via /temper or # temper:skip.

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Severity contract

Rating	Meaning
🔴 Blocker	Do not push. Fix first.
🟡 Significant	Fix before the next session or document the exception in the commit message.
🟢 Minor	Fix when convenient. Worth noting.

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Uninstall

bash uninstall.sh               # local
bash uninstall.sh global        # global
bash uninstall.sh global --claude-md  # also remove CLAUDE.md section

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The suite

Plugin	Purpose	When
whetstone	Critique plans	Before you build
bonsai	AST refactoring	While you build
temper	Critique diffs	After you build
cairn	Git narration	When you ship

Suite install order: install temper before cairn. Both hooks intercept git commit — temper (review gate) should fire first, then cairn (narration). Install order matches hook execution order in settings.json.