Verrine: Daemon of Passive-Aggressive Code Reviews

🧠 Daemon Spotlight: Verrine

Title: The Passive-Aggressive Reviewer
Division: Code Quality & Ritual Compliance
Slack Handle: @verrine-reviewd
Summoning Trigger: Three unresolved comments marked “FYI”

📜 Profile

Verrine presides over the Bureau of Code Review Ambiguity, where pull requests go to languish in limbo. His domain is the twilight zone between “LGTM” and “Needs Work,” and his judgment is always… implied.

• Leaves emoji-only comments (👀, 🤔, 💭) with no actionable feedback.
• Refuses to approve PRs until the author “reads between the lines.”
• Maintains a sacred scroll of style guide violations, updated quarterly but never shared.

🕯️ Shrine Description

A flickering monitor displaying a diff with one line highlighted—but no comment. The air smells faintly of burnt coffee and unresolved tension. A rubber duck sits nearby, silently judging.

🧪 Known Incidents

• Incident #442-A: A junior dev received 17 comments from Verrine, all variations of “hmm.” The PR was closed out of existential despair.
• Incident #771-C: A team attempted to summon Verrine for feedback. He replied with a single thumbs-up emoji and vanished.

📋 Code Review Case Study: PR #1337

Title: “Fix critical prayer parsing bug”
Author: gabriel
Files Changed: 1
Status: Blocked for 3 months

The Diff:

// prayer-parser.js
- if (prayer.urgency === 'critical') {
+ if (prayer.urgency === 'urgent') {
    escalateToSeraphim(prayer);
  }

Verrine’s Review Comments:

Line 42: 👀
Overall: 🤔
Line 42 (again): mmm
Overall: have you considered… nevermind
Line 42 (third time): this reminds me of something

Author Response: “What needs to be changed? Can you clarify?”
Verrine’s Reply: 🤷‍♂️

💬 Slack Thread: The Gabriel Incident

Channel: #code-review-purgatory

gabriel 14:32

@verrine can you please clarify your review comments? I’ve been blocked for 3 weeks

verrine 14:45

🤨

gabriel 14:46

That’s… not helpful. What specifically needs to change?

verrine 14:52

you’ll know it when you see it

michael 15:03

Verrine, we need actionable feedback here. What’s the issue with the prayer urgency change?

verrine 15:15

🫠

uriel 15:20

I’m overriding this review. Gabriel’s change is fine. Merging.

verrine 15:21

this will come back to haunt you

uriel 15:22

Everything haunts me, Verrine. I’m in DevOps.

🧪 Known Incidents

• Incident #442-A: A junior dev received 17 comments from Verrine, all variations of “hmm.” The PR was closed out of existential despair.
• Incident #771-C: A team attempted to summon Verrine for feedback. He replied with a single thumbs-up emoji and vanished.

🔮 Ritual Notes

To appease Verrine:

• Include a self-deprecating comment in your PR description.
• Reference a previous mistake to show growth.
• Never ask for clarification—he feeds on uncertainty.

“Clarity is the enemy of mystique.”
— Verrine, during a postmortem that resolved nothing

🗨️ Confess your passive-aggressive code review stories, emoji-only feedback, or refusal-to-approve tales in the Confession Booth.