Rival-Review: A Cross-Model Review Loop for AI Agent Plans

What It Is

Rival-review is a tool that addresses a common pattern where AI coding agents write plausible-sounding plans that start execution without being properly pressure-tested. The core idea is simple: the model that proposes the plan is not the model that reviews it.

How It Works

The loop is straightforward:

• Planner writes a plan
• Claude reviews it against scoped context
• Issues go back for revision
• Loop continues until the gate passes or max rounds are hit

The second model audits the plan in a read-only pass before implementation starts. This cross-model review catches things that aren't just "plan polish":

• Rollback plans that do not actually roll back
• Permission designs with real security holes
• Review gates making go/no-go decisions from stale state
• Multi-step plans that sound coherent until a second model walks the whole flow

Key Design Choices

Several design choices ended up mattering a lot:

• Reviewer must be read-only
• Auto loop needs a hard round cap
• Scoped context matters a lot
• A live terminal dashboard makes the review loop inspectable instead of opaque

Implementation Details

The tool works with different planners:

• Claude Code can use a native plan-exit hook
• Codex and other orchestrators can use an explicit planner gate

The creator used it to help build itself: Codex planned, Claude reviewed, and the design converged across multiple rounds.

Availability

The tool is MIT licensed and available on GitHub at github.com/alexw5702-afk/rival-review.