Why design reviews must question necessity, not just whether code works

The author approved a pull request in minutes after automated checks passed, only to find weeks later that it had produced copy-pasted validation logic. They argue that design reviews should ask whether an abstraction is needed, not merely whether an implementation functions. In building a React form validation engine, they adopted a rule that a new named rule preset is added only once the same logic is needed in at least two places. The author notes that generality without present need leads to bloated, hard-to-maintain configuration. They acknowledge this policy can slow teams slightly but judge the tradeoff worthwhile, since duplicated code is easy to promote later while unnecessary presets are hard to remove.