Depth Lock — Development skill for Claude Code

depth-lock

An agent skill that stops coding agents from polishing a task forever.

Left alone, an agent will run a fourth review round "to be safe", tidy the files next to the change, turn a reviewer's nice-to-have into new work, and estimate "9–11 days" for something parallel agents finish in an afternoon. `depth-lock` makes it agree on the depth first and then hold it.

What it does

Before building, the agent writes a scope lock into the task journal or plan:

## Scope lock
Goal: 
Acceptance: 
In scope: 
Non-goals: 
Blockers: duplicate action, lost data, stuck state with no recovery, security hole, broken production path
Review caps: plan ≤ 2 rounds, code ≤ 2 rounds; rounds after the first report blockers only
Checkpoints (UTC): plan HH:MM · build HH:MM · gate HH:MM · ship HH:MM
Follow-ups: 

While working, the agent:

• sorts every review finding into blocking, deferred or approved-expansion, and only blockers and approved expansions get worked on;
• stops at two review rounds; blockers found in the last round get fixed test-first and checked in the gate, with no third round;
• cuts non-safety scope when a checkpoint slips and says what it cut;
• writes everything out of scope down as a follow-up (what, where, why, next step) instead of fixing it now or dropping it.

The close-out lists what was delivered against the acceptance list, what was cut, and where the follow-ups went.

The full rules are in [SKILL.md](SKILL.md).

Install

Claude Code:

git clone https://github.com/malakhov-dmitrii/depth-lock ~/.claude/skills/depth-lock

Codex and other agents that read `~/.agents/skills`:

git clone https://github.com/malakhov-dmitrii/depth-lock ~/.agents/skills/depth-lock

The skill triggers on plans, features, fix trains and multi-agent workflows, on review loops that keep repe