Critical Patterns — Recurring Review Findings¶
Patterns that have appeared 3+ times across /vt-c-4-review runs and require
active awareness during development. Each entry documents the anti-pattern,
the correct fix, and where it has been found.
P-001: Hardcoded Airtable Infrastructure IDs¶
Status: Fixed in airtable_client.py (2026-03-05)
Recurrence: 4 times across reviews (first flagged by pattern-recognition-specialist)
Anti-pattern¶
# BAD — hardcoded table IDs
CONTACT_TABLE_ID = "tblGYmwykHGUu9r3k"
COMPANY_TABLE_ID = "tbl4U3xdsw3wTdWmI"
Airtable table IDs (tbl...) and base IDs (app...) are infrastructure
identifiers that differ between production, staging, and test bases. Hardcoding
them makes environment switching impossible without source changes, and leaks
internal schema identifiers into version control.
Correct pattern¶
# GOOD — env var with production default documented inline
CONTACT_TABLE_ID = os.environ.get("AIRTABLE_TABLE_CONTACT", "tblGYmwykHGUu9r3k")
COMPANY_TABLE_ID = os.environ.get("AIRTABLE_TABLE_COMPANY", "tbl4U3xdsw3wTdWmI")
- Use
AIRTABLE_TABLE_<NAME>env vars for table IDs - Use
AIRTABLE_BASE_IDfor base IDs (already parameterised in function signatures) - Keep verified production defaults as the fallback so existing deployments keep working
- Comment the verification date so staleness is detectable
Affected files¶
| File | Fix applied |
|---|---|
plugins/ufi/src/ufi_pipeline/airtable_client.py:27-30 |
2026-03-05 |
Detection signal¶
Code review tools consistently flag constants matching ^tbl[A-Za-z0-9]{14}$
or ^app[A-Za-z0-9]{14}$ as hardcoded Airtable infrastructure IDs.
P-002: Hardcoded User Paths in Shared Scripts¶
Status: Fixed in session-start.sh (2026-03-05)
Recurrence: Flagged as S-01 in review
Anti-pattern¶
# BAD — breaks for any user other than rolf
TOOLKIT_ROOT="/Users/rolf/01-repositories/V025-claude-toolkit"
Correct pattern¶
# GOOD — derives root from script location, works for any user/path
TOOLKIT_ROOT="$(cd "$(dirname "$(realpath "$0")")/../../../.." && pwd)"
When a script is a peer of its containing project (installed into a known
relative path), derive the project root from $0 rather than hardcoding it.
Affected files¶
| File | Fix applied |
|---|---|
plugins/core-standards/scripts/session-start.sh:22 |
2026-03-05 |