Phase 4 self-review gated on REVIEWER — repos with no reviewer skip code review entirely #7

Problem

In the generated skill template, Phase 4's entire self-review section is wrapped in {{#if REVIEWER}}:

{{#if REVIEWER}}
Request a review:
...
If the command errors (reviewer not configured), perform a self-review instead:
1. Read the full diff
...
4. Proceed to Phase 5
{{/if}}

When REVIEWER is not set (no CODEOWNERS, no Copilot configured), the generated Phase 4 has no code review step at all — not even a self-review. The PR is created and Claude proceeds directly to Phase 5.

This contradicts the reference implementation (example-h-dev-loop), which always performs a self-review.

Fix

Move the self-review steps out of the {{#if REVIEWER}} block so they are always present. Keep only the reviewer-addition command (gh pr edit --add-reviewer) inside the conditional. The "If the command errors" fallback text should say "proceed to the self-review below" rather than introducing the self-review.

Update the edge case at the end of the template accordingly.

drafted by Claude on behalf of Daniel Stephenson