Extract review patterns from the wiki

A target repository's GitHub Wiki is a fast-moving, world-editable place to draft and iterate on review patterns. Once a wiki pattern proves itself, extract anchors it into a committed, reproducible location — either the repo's own .planwerk/review_patterns/ (PR-gated and code-coupled) or planwerk-agent's bundled catalog (so every project benefits).

The command is mechanical: it never calls Claude. It reads the wiki's review_patterns/ directory, lets you choose which entries to anchor, and writes the selected files.

Promote a wiki pattern into the repo (PR)

The default mode writes the selected patterns into the target repo's .planwerk/review_patterns/ and opens a pull request:

planwerk-agent extract owner/repo

You are prompted for each wiki pattern (y/N/q). To skip the prompt, take every pattern with --all, or name specific patterns by their filename stem:

planwerk-agent extract owner/repo --all
planwerk-agent extract owner/repo --pattern no-raw-sql --pattern bounded-retries

Review the resulting PR like any other change — the patterns become committed, branch-protected, and reviewable, in contrast to the wiki where anyone can edit them.

Write directly into the working tree

With --local, the patterns are written straight into the current working tree's .planwerk/review_patterns/ and no PR is opened. The repository reference is inferred from the origin remote when omitted:

planwerk-agent extract --local --all

A dirty working tree prompts for confirmation first; pass --force to skip it. See Use local mode for the shared --local behavior.

Contribute a pattern to the bundled catalog

With --to-catalog, the patterns are anchored into this planwerk-agent checkout's bundled review catalog (internal/patterns/patterns/review/), with each pattern's frontmatter **Category**: normalized to review so it loads as a first-class review pattern. This is the maintainer/contribution path and must be run from a planwerk-agent checkout:

planwerk-agent extract owner/repo --all --to-catalog

The selected files land under internal/patterns/patterns/review/; commit them and open a PR against planwerk-agent so the patterns ship to every project.

Selecting which patterns to anchor

Flag	Effect
(none)	Prompt for each pattern interactively (y/N/q)
--all	Take every wiki review pattern
--pattern <stem>	Take only the named pattern(s), by filename stem (repeatable)

A non-interactive run (no TTY) requires --all or --pattern. The wiki is an untrusted, world-editable source, so an automated run (CI, cron) refuses to extract — and, in the default mode, push into a PR — every pattern without an explicit choice, rather than failing open on whatever the wiki currently holds.

Overwriting an existing pattern

The destination filename is the wiki pattern's stem, so --local and --to-catalog refuse to write when a file of that name already exists — a wiki author cannot silently clobber a trusted repo or catalog pattern by naming a pattern to collide with it. Pass --overwrite to replace it on purpose; the report marks each file that overwrote an existing one.

See also

• Write your own review patterns — author patterns directly in .planwerk/review_patterns/.
• Use the GitHub Wiki — enable and populate the wiki knowledge source extract reads from.