Tough Critic Download
Desktop app for macOS and Windows

Vibe coded it, or inherited a legacy app? Find out what stands between it and production.

Tough Critic reads your project the way a demanding senior engineer would. AI critics inspect the code against clean-code and domain-language principles, then hand you an evidence-backed report: what is wrong, where it is, why it matters, and how to fix it.

Download freeSee what it checks

Bring your own Anthropic or OpenAI key, or use your Claude Code or Codex login. Your code stays read-only.

Report · acme-storefront
  • 2Critical
  • 5High
  • 9Medium
  • 4Low
  • CC-01checkout() validates, prices, charges, and emails in one functionsrc/orders/checkout.ts:42-188
  • DL-01"client", "customer", and "account" name one conceptsrc/models/ · 14 files
  • CC-04Payment errors are swallowed and logged as successsrc/payments/gateway.ts:77-91

Trusted by teams shipping to production

  • Lumen Labs
  • Brightforge
  • Quillstack
  • Harborline
  • Ferrous
  • Canopy
  • Orbital
  • Parcelwise
Features

A senior review, without waiting for a senior.

Tough Critic is the design and maintainability part of a production-readiness review. It finds the problems that slow every change after launch, and tells you exactly where they are.

  • Craftsmanship

    Names that hide intent, functions that do several jobs, duplicated knowledge, leaky boundaries, and error paths that bury the main story.

  • Domain language

    One concept under several names, one name for several concepts, and terms that drift between the schema, the code, and the UI. These are where duplicate features come from.

  • Evidence and fixes

    Every finding cites files and line ranges, which the app checks against your project, and comes with a severity, an effort estimate, and a concrete fix.

  • Critics in parallel

    One critic maps the project, area critics inspect it side by side, and a final pass merges and ranks the findings. A quick run usually takes a few minutes.

  • Your provider, your keys

    Use an Anthropic or OpenAI API key (or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint), or the Claude Code or Codex login you already have. Keys are encrypted with your OS keychain.

  • Read-only by design

    Tough Critic never changes your code. The project is scanned on your computer first, and critics can only read files in that scan.

  • Scope and depth

    Critique the whole project or the folders that matter, add focus notes, and choose quick, standard, or deep depth for 3, 5, or 8 areas.

  • Reports you can share

    Filter findings by severity, open cited files, then export HTML or PDF, or save the report into the project next to the code it describes.

Tough Critic does not run your tests, and it does not replace a security audit, load testing, or a dependency scan.

Why we built it

Code got cheap. Understanding it did not.

AI assistants can produce a working app in an afternoon. What they rarely leave behind is a codebase that is easy to change: functions that do one thing, names that mean one thing, and a vocabulary that matches the business. Those problems do not show up in a demo. They show up months later, as features that take weeks and bugs that keep coming back.

Tough Critic began as a review skill we gave our own coding agents. It distills two books that shaped how good teams write software: the craftsmanship checks associated with Robert C. Martin's Clean Code, and the ubiquitous language and bounded contexts of Eric Evans' Domain-Driven Design. It caught real problems, every time.

The people who needed it most, founders shipping a first app and teams inheriting someone else's, rarely had a senior engineer to run it. So we packaged it as a desktop app anyone can point at a folder, with critics that show their work.

  • Evidence over opinion

    A finding without a file and a line range is not a finding.

  • A fix, not a lecture

    Every problem comes with what to change and how much work it is.

  • Hard on code, easy on people

    The critic is tough so the code review with your team does not have to be.

Find out before your users do.

Point Tough Critic at a project folder and read your first report in minutes.

Download for macOS or Windows