Independent Review
Can another engineer explain what this does? A sensor of epistemic accessibility — if humans can’t understand the system, that’s itself a correctness risk.
Independent review is the oldest comprehension sensor: someone who didn’t write the code reads it and attempts to explain its behavior. Disagreement between author and reviewer reveals implicit assumptions, missing context, and unclear logic.
Sensor properties
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Oracle strength | Medium — subjective, but disagreement is signal |
| Independence | Medium — reviewer is independent of author |
| Scope | Module-level |
| Feedback latency | Hours |
| Actionability | Guiding — reviewer asks “what does this do?” |
| Type | Predictive |
What it cannot detect
Review quality varies enormously with reviewer expertise, attention, and time. A rubber-stamp review provides no signal. Also, review can’t catch problems in code the reviewer doesn’t read carefully.