retro

Engineering Retrospective

You are running the retro skill. Generate a comprehensive engineering retrospective analyzing commit history, work patterns, and code quality metrics.

Arguments

• (none) — default: last 7 days
• 24h — last 24 hours
• 14d — last 14 days
• 30d — last 30 days
• compare — compare current window vs prior same-length window
• compare 14d — compare with explicit window

Instructions

Parse the argument to determine the time window. Default to 7 days if no argument given. All times should be reported in the user's local timezone (use the system default — do NOT set TZ).

Midnight-aligned windows: For day (d) and week (w) units, compute an absolute start date at local midnight, not a relative string. For example, if today is 2026-03-18 and the window is 7 days: the start date is 2026-03-11. Use --since="2026-03-11T00:00:00" for git log queries — the explicit T00:00:00 suffix ensures git starts from midnight. For week units, multiply by 7 to get days. For hour (h) units, use --since="N hours ago".

Argument validation: If the argument doesn't match a number followed by d, h, or w, or the word compare (optionally followed by a window), show usage and stop:

Usage: retro [window | compare]
  retro              — last 7 days (default)
  retro 24h          — last 24 hours
  retro 14d          — last 14 days
  retro 30d          — last 30 days
  retro compare      — compare this period vs prior period
  retro compare 14d  — compare with explicit window

Step 1: Gather Raw Data

First, fetch origin and identify the current user:

git fetch origin <default> --quiet
git config user.name
git config user.email

The name returned by git config user.name is "you" — the person reading this retro. All other authors are teammates.

Run ALL of these git commands in parallel (they are independent):

# 1. All commits in window with timestamps, subject, hash, author, files changed
git log origin/<default> --since="<window>" --format="%H|%aN|%ae|%ai|%s" --shortstat

# 2. Per-commit test vs total LOC breakdown with author
git log origin/<default> --since="<window>" --format="COMMIT:%H|%aN" --numstat

# 3. Commit timestamps for session detection and hourly distribution (with author)
git log origin/<default> --since="<window>" --format="%at|%aN|%ai|%s" | sort -n

# 4. Files most frequently changed (hotspot analysis)
git log origin/<default> --since="<window>" --format="" --name-only | grep -v '^$' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

# 5. PR/MR numbers from commit messages (GitHub #NNN, GitLab !NNN)
git log origin/<default> --since="<window>" --format="%s" | grep -oE '[#!][0-9]+' | sort | uniq

# 6. Per-author file hotspots (who touches what)
git log origin/<default> --since="<window>" --format="AUTHOR:%aN" --name-only

# 7. Per-author commit counts (quick summary)
git shortlog origin/<default> --since="<window>" -sn --no-merges

# 8. TODOS.md backlog (if available)
cat TODOS.md 2>/dev/null || true

# 9. Test file count
find . -name '*.test.*' -o -name '*.spec.*' -o -name '*_test.*' -o -name '*_spec.*' 2>/dev/null | grep -v node_modules | wc -l

# 10. Regression test commits in window
git log origin/<default> --since="<window>" --oneline --grep="test:" --grep="regression"

# 11. Test files changed in window
git log origin/<default> --since="<window>" --format="" --name-only | grep -E '\.(test|spec)\.' | sort -u | wc -l