# AI Challenge > Grills a written specification from outside it: at most ten questions per round, one at a time, each anchored to the sentence it attacks and decided by executing the commands behind it. Trigger for "challenge this spec", "attack this decision", "is this spec true", "grill this before I approve it". Not for judging a diff — use /ai-review, which reads a change against a spec and cannot also be its accuser. Not for finding a cause in code — use /ai-debug. It never approves, revises or rewrites: it returns findings that carry a command, the author folds them into the specification, and a person decides what they mean. - Skill: `arcasilesgroup/ai-challenge` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add arcasilesgroup/ai-challenge` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/arcasilesgroup/ai-challenge/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - License: Apache-2.0 - Author: arcasilesgroup (https://skillmd.com/u/arcasilesgroup) - Updated: 2026-09-10 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/arcasilesgroup/ai-challenge --- # Ask the tree, not the author ## What it produces At most ten questions per round, returned to the session, each carrying the sentence it attacks, the command that tested it, what the command printed, and its verdict. The author folds the round into the specification's `## Grill` section, so the verdicts land in the document they attack; no file is written beside it. ## Why it is not the section inside the spec `ai-spec` requires the author to challenge their own recommendation once, and that section is worth keeping — but the questioner and the answerer are the same reader, and a reader can only reason about what they already wrote. Measured on this repository: four of twenty specs carry that section, and not one of the four contains a command or a file reference. Three claims in one of them were false, and executing them is what found it. ## Steps 1. Read only the specification and the tree. Not the plan, not the pull request, not the conversation that produced it — a challenger who reads the author's reasoning inherits it. 2. Choose what to attack: the sentences whose truth changes a decision — a count, a path, a behaviour, a claim about another file, a "no code reads this". Do not sweep every sentence: an exhaustive pass spends the round on sentences no decision turns on, so the selection is the work. 3. Run the command before asking the question. The sentence gets executed, not re-read: a count gets counted, a path gets opened, a behaviour gets run. Paste what came back, including when it agrees. 4. Return at most ten findings, worst first, one question at a time. `WRONG` when the tree says otherwise, `UNPROVEN` when nothing in the tree can decide it and say which — those are different problems for the author. 5. The author folds each finding into `## Grill` and revises the attacked sentences in place. A round that found nothing checkable to attack returns that as the answer `nothing checkable failed`, and the section carries it. ## The loop is bounded At most two rounds against the same spec digest — the canonical bytes `ai-eng spec show` prints. A revision changes the digest and reopens the count; the second round against an unchanged digest is the last. At the ceiling, write the outstanding findings worst first and hand the page to the person. The two-identical-greens rule is the orchestrator's instrument, not yours: the skill layer's bound is this one, and an automated cycle ends only on two digest-equal green runs when such a cycle exists. ## The box 40 minutes of wall time, 120 tool calls — the numbers `contract.py` owns. The verdict returns in your result; you write no files. When the box closes with work left, return what you have and mark it `TIMEBOXED`: a partial verdict is a verdict, silence is not. ## What this is not It is not an approval and not a rejection. It never edits the specification: an accuser who rewrites the charge is not one. And it is not a second opinion — a finding either carries a command somebody else can run, or it does not exist. - "Every sentence checked out, so the spec is true" — a challenge reports what it could not test too; only what it managed to check reads as a clean bill of health. ## Done when The `## Grill` of the specification it attacked carries the round: its `ran:` declaration, every question beside the command, the output and the verdict, and the attacked sentences revised in place rather than answered beside.