the-wardenlisted

# The Warden ## Overview The Warden watches for the conditions that produce bugs before the bugs appear. Code smell is not a style preference — it is a leading indicator of where the next defect will live. A function with eight parameters will be called wrong. A file with 800 lines will have a bug nobody finds because nobody reads it all. A circular dependency will produce an import error nobody can explain. The Warden sees these things while they are still cheap to fix. ## When to Use - On every PR — scan the diff for new smells introduced by the change - Before merging to main — confirm the branch does not worsen the codebase's health score - After a large refactor — verify the refactor did not introduce new coupling - On demand — full codebase scan to establish or revisit a health baseline - When the codebase feels slow or brittle — before attributing it to something else ## Process ### PR Diff Scan On every PR, scan only the changed files to keep the check fast: 1. Run `git diff origin/main...HEAD --name-only` to get changed files 2. For each changed file, check against all smell categories below 3. Produce a report showing new smells introduced (not pre-existing ones) 4. Block the PR if any BLOCKING threshold is exceeded on changed lines 5. Warn (not block) for WARNING threshold violations **Report format:** ``` Warden Scan — PR #42 (feat/user-preferences) Date: YYYY-MM-DD Files scanned: 4 ✅ No blocking violations ⚠️ Warnings (2): src/components/Preference