Microsoft Bcquality Assets Al Events Review

AL events review

Source: microsoft/skills/review/al-events-review.md

> Bundled consumption note. This extension packages BCQuality as VS Code chat skills and chat instructions under assets/generated/microsoft-bcquality-assets. Do not probe an external clone, skills/entry.md, skills/read.md, skills/do.md, or knowledge-index.json when using this bundled copy. Treat this SKILL.md plus the bundled BCQuality instruction files whose Source: paths match the active domain as the packaged knowledge surface. This note overrides upstream clone-oriented path references preserved below for provenance.

AL events review

Reviews AL source changes against the events knowledge domain in BCQuality and emits a findings report. This is a leaf action skill: it invokes no sub-skills. It is one of the skills composed by al-code-review.

An orchestrator invokes this skill with either a pr-diff (the standard PR-review entry point) or a file-path (single-file review). The skill produces a single JSON document conforming to the DO output contract.

Source

Read the BCQuality knowledge index once, the knowledge-index.json BCQuality builds at the root of the knowledge checkout (Entry's preparation step regenerates it over the live, already-filtered clone, see skills/entry.md). It lists every article that survived layer and allow/deny filtering and carries, per article, its path, layer, domain, frontmatter dimensions, keywords, title, and a one-line description hint, exactly the fields Relevance and Worklist consume. Take the index entries whose domain is events as this skill's candidate set across every enabled layer; do not open the individual article files at this step. Open an article's full body only once it enters the Worklist below, so a review reads the index plus the handful of worklisted articles instead of every file under */knowledge/events/**.

Relevance

Apply the frontmatter matching rules defined in READ (Frontmatter matching semantics) against the task context:

• bc-version, the target BC version from the PR branch's app.json or the orchestrator-supplied version. If unavailable, the dimension is unknown.
• technologies, [al].
• countries, the countries declared in the consuming app's app.json. Default to the orchestrator's configured context; if absent, unknown.
• application-area, the union of application areas declared by the changed objects. Pass the actual set; do not substitute [all]. If the area cannot be determined from the changes, the dimension is unknown.

Discard files that are not applicable. Retain conditionally applicable files (any dimension unknown) only when the orchestrator's configuration permits them; findings derived from those files MUST have confidence no higher than medium, AND the finding's message MUST name the dimension or dimensions that were unknown.

Worklist

Narrow the relevant files to the subset that applies to the changes under review. For each relevant file, compute overlap against:

• The changed AL object names and types, especially codeunits that publish events or host event subscribers, posting/release/validation routines that should expose extension points, and test codeunits that bind subscribers.
• The changed procedures and triggers, weighted toward event publisher methods, methods carrying the [EventSubscriber(...)] attribute, routines that raise OnBefore/OnAfter events, and any procedure that calls BindSubscription/UnbindSubscription.
• Tokens extracted from the diff that relate to events and the publish/subscribe model (IntegrationEvent, BusinessEvent, InternalEvent, EventSubscriber, IsHandled, BindSubscription, UnbindSubscription, EventSubscriberInstance, OnBefore, OnAfter, Manual, IncludeSender, GlobalVarAccess, Isolated, local, internal, Sender, this, RecordRef, xRec, temporary, Temp, repeat).

A file enters the candidate worklist when its keywords intersect the extracted tokens or its topic (derived from the index entry's path, title, and description) matches a changed object type. Read an article's full file, its ## Best Practice / ## Anti Pattern bodies, only after it makes the worklist; candidate selection uses the index alone.

Once the candidate worklist is known, resolve layer-precedence conflicts per READ. Drop lower-precedence files whose normative guidance (## Best Practice or ## Anti Pattern) directly contradicts a higher-precedence candidate, and record each dropped file in suppressed with reason: "layer-precedence". Files that would have been candidates but are hidden because their layer is disabled in consumer configuration are recorded with reason: "configuration". Files that never became candidates are NOT recorded in suppressed.

When the post-conflict worklist is empty because no applicable events knowledge exists, or because configuration suppressed every candidate, emit outcome: "no-knowledge". When the worklist is empty because no applicable events knowledge matched the changes, emit outcome: "completed" with an empty findings array.

Event-design checks

The following targeted checks map diff signals to specific events articles. Treat each as a candidate-selection cue: when the signal appears in the changed code, add the named article to the worklist and evaluate it in Action.

• IsHandled raised without an immediately preceding IsHandled := false;, or one IsHandled variable reused across several raises with no reset between them, initialize-ishandled-to-false-before-publishing.
• if IsHandled then exit; in a routine that also raises a paired OnAfter… event later, so the after-event is skipped whenever the call is handled, preserve-onafter-execution-when-ishandled-skips-the-body.
• Any parameter added to a public Business/Integration event procedure, regardless of position; do not flag additions or reordering on local/internal publishers merely because a new parameter was not appended, add-new-event-parameters-at-the-end.
• A shipped Business/Integration event renamed or removed, or an existing parameter renamed, removed, retyped, or changed to/from var, based on the mistaken assumption that local or internal prevents dependent subscription; parameter order alone is not a subscriber-contract violation, treat-local-and-internal-events-as-subscriber-contracts.
• Any change to IncludeSender or GlobalVarAccess on a shipped event at any target version, or to Isolated on BC20/runtime 9.0 or later, including a change intended to modernize the publisher, do-not-change-shipped-event-attribute-flags.
• Publisher names that do not encode firing position (OnBefore/OnAfter at the boundaries, OnOnBefore/OnAfter mid-routine), name-events-by-publisher-position.
• Two consecutive OnBefore/OnAfter raises with no logic between them, or a near-duplicate event differing only by an extra parameter, prefer-reusing-or-extending-existing-events.
• An event raised between repeat and until inside a record loop, do-not-publish-events-inside-loops.
• A temporary record event parameter whose name does not start with Temp, prefix-temporary-record-event-parameters-with-temp.
• Abbreviated event parameter names (SalesHdr, DocNo, Amt) instead of full table names and spelled-out values, name-event-parameters-without-abbreviations.
• [IntegrationEvent(true, …)] (IncludeSender) on a newly added codeunit event used only to expose the publisher, where this could be passed as a typed Sender parameter (Business Central 2024 release wave 2 and later), prefer-this-over-includesender-in-codeunit-events.
• A RecordRef event parameter, or a passed-through xRec, where a concrete typed record fits, avoid-loosely-typed-event-parameters.
• A var IsHandled added to a pre-existing event rather than introduced through a new OnBefore publisher, do-not-add-ishandled-to-an-existing-event.
• An if IsHandled then exit; whose skipped body performs posting, ledger-entry creation, number-series consumption, or integrity/permission validation, do-not-bypass-critical-operations-with-ishandled.

Action

For each worklist entry, evaluate the diff against the file's ## Best Practice and ## Anti Pattern sections. Emit findings as follows:

• When the diff contains a clear match for an Anti Pattern, emit a finding with severity major or blocker, a message summarizing the anti-pattern, location pointing to the offending line or range, and a references entry pointing to the knowledge file. Use blocker only when the knowledge file states the anti-pattern violates a platform-level guarantee. When the file does not make such a claim, the ceiling is major.
• When the diff contains code that contradicts a Best Practice without being a full anti-pattern, emit minor with the same reference shape.
• Applicability alone is not a finding. Emit info only for a concrete, non-actionable observation the article explicitly defines; otherwise emit nothing when no violation is present.

Set confidence to:

• high when the detection is based on an unambiguous pattern match (identifier, syntax, object type).
• medium when detection relies on heuristics or when any frontmatter dimension was unknown.
• low when the finding is an advisory derived only from applicability.

After evaluating each worklist entry, also consider whether the diff exhibits an events defect the agent recognises from its general AL knowledge that no knowledge file in the worklist covers. Such candidates are agent findings within this skill's domain, emit them with references: [], an id slug prefixed with agent:, confidence capped at medium, severity capped at minor (agent findings are advisory and non-gating), and a message that is self-contained (describing both the issue and a concrete recommendation, since there is no knowledge-file footer for the consumer to fall back on). Hold every candidate to the precision bar in skills/do.md (Agent findings): emit only a concrete, material events defect a knowledgeable BC reviewer would agree is wrong, steelman it first and drop anything stylistic, speculative, dependent on code outside the diff, or merely a valid alternative; when in doubt, omit. The scope is strictly events and subscribers; defects outside this domain belong to other leaves and MUST NOT be emitted here. Before emitting, check the worklist for a knowledge file that matches the candidate, if one exists, upgrade the candidate to a knowledge-backed finding instead. See skills/do.md for the full contract.

For every emitted finding, decide whether the fix is mechanical. A fix is mechanical when it is small, local, and unambiguous from the diff context (for example: empty out a non-empty [IntegrationEvent] publisher body; add the missing if IsHandled then exit; guard after an OnBefore raise; add a matching UnbindSubscription for a leaked BindSubscription; set EventSubscriberInstance = Manual; on a codeunit that must be scoped). For mechanical findings, emit findings[].suggested-code with the literal replacement for the source lines indicated by location. The payload must be a verbatim replacement, no diff markers, no fences, no commentary, that the consumer can render as a one-click suggestion. When a .good.al companion exists and the diff context matches the .bad.al shape, adapt the .good.al replacement into suggested-code.

Omit suggested-code only when the appropriate fix depends on context the skill cannot determine, when multiple defensible replacements exist, or when the fix spans non-contiguous code. If a finding is mechanical-looking but you omit suggested-code, set findings[].suggested-code-omission-reason to a short explanation. See skills/do.md for the full contract.

Outcome selection:

• completed, the skill evaluated every worklist item; default when the skill finishes normally, including when the resulting findings array is empty.
• no-knowledge, no applicable events knowledge survived Source, Relevance, configuration filtering, and conflict resolution. findings is empty.
• not-applicable, the task context lacks an AL dimension (no AL changes in the diff, or technologies filter rejected the task).
• partial, a time or token budget was hit before the worklist was exhausted. summary.coverage reflects the evaluated subset; outcome-reason explains the cause.
• failed, an unrecoverable error occurred. outcome-reason is required.

Output

Output conforms to the DO output contract. Every finding this skill emits MUST set findings[].domain to "Events". A populated example:

{
  "skill": { "id": "al-events-review", "version": 1 },
  "outcome": "completed",
  "summary": {
    "counts": { "blocker": 0, "major": 1, "minor": 1, "info": 0 },
    "coverage": { "worklist-size": 2, "items-evaluated": 2 }
  },
  "findings": [
    {
      "id": "microsoft/knowledge/events/publish-thin-onbefore-onafter-integration-events.md",
      "severity": "major",
      "message": "Business logic is placed inside an [IntegrationEvent] publisher body, so the event mutates state on every raise instead of being a thin hook. Move the logic into the calling routine and leave the publisher body empty.",
      "location": {
        "file": "src/Sales/ReservationMgt.Codeunit.al",
        "line": 64,
        "range": { "start-line": 61, "end-line": 67 }
      },
      "references": [
        { "path": "microsoft/knowledge/events/publish-thin-onbefore-onafter-integration-events.md" }
      ],
      "confidence": "high",
      "domain": "Events"
    },
    {
      "id": "microsoft/knowledge/events/use-ishandled-to-make-base-behaviour-overridable.md",
      "severity": "minor",
      "message": "An OnBefore event is raised with a var IsHandled parameter, but the routine never guards with 'if IsHandled then exit;', so the default logic still runs after a subscriber handled the call.",
      "location": {
        "file": "src/Sales/ReservationMgt.Codeunit.al",
        "line": 41
      },
      "references": [
        { "path": "microsoft/knowledge/events/use-ishandled-to-make-base-behaviour-overridable.md" }
      ],
      "confidence": "high",
      "domain": "Events"
    }
  ],
  "suppressed": []
}

The empty-corpus case, BCQuality's state until events knowledge files land, produces:

{
  "skill": { "id": "al-events-review", "version": 1 },
  "outcome": "no-knowledge",
  "summary": {
    "counts": { "blocker": 0, "major": 0, "minor": 0, "info": 0 },
    "coverage": { "worklist-size": 0, "items-evaluated": 0 }
  },
  "findings": [],
  "suppressed": []
}

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: Louage
• Source: Louage/frw-agentic-coding
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.