Use reviewer skills

A reviewer skill tells EV what kind of review to perform. Skills can focus the reviewer on a domain such as security or performance, encode project-specific checks, or gather evidence from a running interface.

Reviewer skills are different from the ev-review coding-agent workflow:

Reviewer skill	Coding-agent workflow
Runs inside an EV review and defines what the reviewer checks or gathers.	Teaches Codex or Claude Code how to start EV, consume findings, fix issues, and repeat.
Managed with ev skills.	Managed with ev agent.
Selected with --skill or --auto.	Invoked as $ev-review or /ev-review.

Find available skills

ev skills list

EV combines skills from three places:

1. Built-in skills distributed with EV.
2. User skills in ~/.fiberplane/ev/skills/.
3. Project skills in .ev/skills/ inside the current repository.

Project skills take precedence over a user or built-in skill with the same name. Inspect the resolved skill and its source with:

ev skills show <name>

Run a skill

Choose one explicitly:

ev review -b origin/main --desktop --skill security-audit

Or let EV select skills from the changed files:

ev review -b origin/main --stream --auto

Use an explicit skill when you want a predictable review lens. Use --auto when the change spans multiple concerns and you want EV to choose relevant reviewers.

Skills that create evidence

Review agents are restricted by default. A skill that needs browser automation or evidence creation must declare those capabilities and a narrow permission allowlist in its frontmatter. EV then exposes a review-specific artifact directory and review ID, and accepts only the allowed evidence commands.

The project-local .ev/skills/screenshot-evidence.md in the EV repository is a concrete example. It:

1. Connects to a debug EV Desktop renderer.
2. Captures the dashboard and a populated review.
3. Attaches each screenshot to the active review as soon as it is captured.
4. Removes the temporary image after EV has stored it.

Run it only in a repository where ev skills list shows it:

ev review -b origin/main --desktop --skill screenshot-evidence

This pattern lets a review include the UI state that supports its conclusions without granting every reviewer unrestricted browser or filesystem access. See Work with evidence for the resulting Evidence tab and manual attachment options.

Create a project skill

Create a starter skill:

ev skills create my-review

Keep a team-specific skill under .ev/skills/ so it can be reviewed and versioned with the repository. Use the user skills directory for a personal reviewer you want across projects.

See Write a reviewer skill for the file anatomy, auto-selection patterns, and rule-level path gates.