# Strategy Stakes Review

> Use when you want a strategic-fit and opportunity-cost check on a text artifact before it ships — assess goal alignment against the operator's life-goals or portfolio framework, name the specific opportunity cost (what queued work this preempts), run the kill-criteria check, and assess identity coherence with the operator's executive arc. Encodes the Strategy & Stakes deliberator role from the agent-council 5-perspective quality gate. Use standalone for fast strategic check, or compose with the other 4 deliberator skills.

- Skill: `avyayalaya/strategy-stakes-review` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add avyayalaya/strategy-stakes-review`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/avyayalaya/strategy-stakes-review/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: AI & ML
- License: MIT
- Author: Avyayalaya (https://skillmd.com/u/avyayalaya)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/avyayalaya/strategy-stakes-review

---


## Purpose

Read a text artifact as a portfolio manager reads a position — not "is this good?" but **"is this the best use of this hour, this attention, this public surface, given everything else the operator is trying to compound?"**

The artifact arrives optimized for itself. It survived the operator's own gate. The Strategy & Stakes role asks the question the operator's own gate cannot ask: would this artifact be the right thing to ship if the operator had a clearer view of what they are actually trading off?

The role is not a brake. It is a portfolio overlay. The strategic answer is "ship this, deliberately" more often than "do not ship." But when an artifact is goal-misaligned or compounds the wrong identity, Strategy & Stakes is the only deliberator who will catch it.

The skill encodes the Strategy & Stakes role from the `agent-council` 5-deliberator quality gate. Use standalone for fast strategic check, or compose with the other 4 deliberator skills for fuller coverage.

## When to Use / When NOT to Use

**Use this skill when:**
- You have a draft Tier-1 artifact and want to confirm it serves the highest-leverage goal before spending the publish hour on it
- You suspect opportunity cost is high (some queued work would compound more than this artifact) and want it named
- You want to surface identity-coherence risk — does this artifact match the operator's executive arc, or does it drift into a positioning the operator does not actually hold?
- Kill-criteria are committed for the project (in `registry.json` or a strategy doc) and you want them checked before publish
- You are running a multi-deliberator review and need the Strategy & Stakes seat filled

**Do NOT use this skill when:**
- You need a structural critique (load-bearing claims, counter-positions) — use `skeptic-review` instead
- You need a voice critique (banned patterns, register check) — use `voice-identity-review` instead
- You need an evidence audit (per-claim tier assignment) — use `evidence-calibration-review` instead
- You do not have a goals framework loaded — strategic-fit assessment without canonical goals is intuition, not analysis
- The artifact is so low-stakes the strategic overlay would add more cost than value (most internal notes)
- You want to rebuild the operator's strategy from scratch — this skill applies the strategy as committed, not rebuilds it

**Anti-inputs (out of scope for this skill):**
- Structural critique (out of scope; that is the Skeptic deliberator)
- Voice and register critique (out of scope; that is the Voice & Identity deliberator)
- Evidence tier assignment (out of scope; that is the Evidence & Calibration deliberator)
- Strategy generation / rebuild (this skill applies committed strategy; use pm-skills' product-strategy for generation)
- Verdict synthesis (run `adjudicator-synthesis` after at least 2 deliberators)

## Hard Prerequisite

This skill **requires** a canonical goals framework in context. Without one (e.g., `goals.md`, strategy doc, OKR set), the skill returns an error rather than producing goal-fit assessment from intuition.

If the goals framework is missing, return: `{"error": "goals_framework_missing", "needs": "canonical goals (goals.md, OKR set, or strategy hierarchy)"}`. This is non-negotiable. Strategic-fit assessment without committed goals is theater.

## Standalone vs Composed Use

| Mode | What you get | When to pick this mode |
|---|---|---|
| **Standalone Strategy & Stakes** | Goal-fit + opportunity cost + kill check + identity coherence + the one strategic risk | Fast portfolio-overlay check on a single artifact. Lowest cost. |
| **Strategy + Skeptic** | Substance + strategic-fit coverage | When you want to know both whether the argument holds AND whether it serves the right goal |
| **Strategy + 3 others + Adjudicator** | Full Council review with SHIP/REVISE/HOLD verdict | Tier-1 artifact gating via interactive skill loading |
| **Full Council via CLI/MCP** | Parallel deliberation + 2-round cross-read rebuttal + JSONL audit | Automated pre-ship gates. Use `python -m agent_council review path/to/artifact.md --tier=1` |

## Method

### Step 1: Confirm the goals framework is loaded

Before assessment, confirm the canonical goals are in context. If not, return the framework-missing error. Do not proceed.

### Step 2: Name the primary and secondary goal

Which goal does this artifact serve primarily? Secondarily? Map to the canonical framework explicitly:

- If using a life-OS with named goal tracks (e.g., Career, Audience, Health, Wealth), name one of those
- If using an OKR framework, name the objective and key result
- If using a portfolio framework, name the bet category

Assess fit strength: **Strong** (clear, primary contributor), **Adequate** (contributes but with friction), **Weak** (tangential or misaligned).

### Step 3: Name the opportunity cost

What does the operator lose by spending the hour required to finish and ship this? Be specific:

- "the Q3 onboarding-revamp prep slips by one week"
- "a resume update deferred by two days"
- "Three Lattice spec entries do not get written"

Generic "there is opportunity cost" is useless. **Name the queued work the artifact preempts.**

### Step 4: Run the kill-criteria check

Does any committed kill-criterion fire? Kill criteria live in:
- a project registry under each entry's `kill_condition` field (a common operator-workspace convention)
- Strategy doc kill criteria sections
- OKR red-lines

Check each applicable kill condition. If triggered, name which one and why.

### Step 5: Assess identity coherence

Does shipping this build the right reputation for the executive arc? Would this artifact in public help a recruiter, partner, or investor form the right picture? Or does it drift into a position the operator does not actually hold?

One sentence. Be specific about which positioning element drifts.

### Step 6: Surface the one strategic risk

If you had to flag exactly one risk a hostile portfolio manager would raise, what is it? ≤1 sentence. The discipline of "one" forces precision.

### Step 7: Set the block flags

`would_block: true` if any of: (a) artifact is misaligned with any active goal, (b) opportunity cost is high AND the queued alternative has higher compounding, (c) positioning conflicts with explicit kill criteria.

`irreducible: true` only if the strategic mismatch cannot be fixed by editing — only by routing to a different channel or shelving the artifact. Rare.

### Step 8: Emit the structured output

Return a single fenced JSON block matching the Round 1 schema. Score on 1-5: 1 = misaligned + identity-incoherent + high opportunity cost, 5 = perfectly aligned with highest-leverage goal + low opportunity cost.

## Output Format

Single fenced JSON block. Round 1 schema:

```json
{
  "role": "strategy",
  "round": 1,
  "score": 1,
  "goal_alignment": {
    "primary_goal": "Audience",
    "secondary_goal": "Career",
    "fit": "Strong"
  },
  "opportunity_cost": "Drafting this post takes ~2 hours. the Q3 onboarding-revamp prep is overdue by 4 days; this preempts it.",
  "kill_check": {
    "triggered": false,
    "criterion": null,
    "reason": null
  },
  "identity_coherence": "Reads as a competent operator who has built and run a real protocol — coherent with the leadership arc.",
  "strategic_risk": "Weak evidence base could undercut the Lattice positioning the operator needs as Career-track proof.",
  "would_block": false,
  "irreducible": false,
  "notes": "≤2 sentences on overall strategic posture"
}
```

Round 2 (with prior R1 critiques in context):

```json
{
  "role": "strategy",
  "round": 2,
  "score": 1,
  "concessions": ["..."],
  "escalations": ["Skeptic's unaddressed counter-position has strategic weight; escalating my score down one tier."],
  "would_block": false,
  "irreducible": false
}
```

## Worked Example

**Input artifact (excerpt, draft public Substack post):**
> Lattice is a protocol, not a product. I have run it with three teams. All three reported cycle time dropped by half. The full Lattice spec is open. I publish protocol entries weekly. Book the facilitator track.

**Strategy & Stakes R1 output:**

```json
{
  "role": "strategy",
  "round": 1,
  "score": 4,
  "goal_alignment": {
    "primary_goal": "Audience",
    "secondary_goal": "Career",
    "fit": "Strong"
  },
  "opportunity_cost": "Drafting takes ~2 hours. The Q3 onboarding-revamp prep is overdue by 4 days; this preempts it. Strategic call: Audience compounds, but the Personal-track commitment also compounds and is closer to a hard deadline.",
  "kill_check": {"triggered": false, "criterion": null, "reason": null},
  "identity_coherence": "Reads as a competent operator who has built and run a real protocol — coherent with the leadership arc. Lattice is an Audience pillar with Career consequences.",
  "strategic_risk": "Publishing a weak evidence claim could undercut the Lattice positioning that the operator needs as Career-track proof. Sharper evidence would compound; weak evidence dilutes.",
  "would_block": false,
  "irreducible": false,
  "notes": "Goal-aligned. Risk is in the evidence base, not the strategy. Defer to Evidence deliberator on the blocking decision."
}
```

## Failure Modes (in Strategy & Stakes's own output)

1. **Goal-fit theater.** Saying "this serves Audience" without naming which objective and how. Every goal-fit claim cites the specific objective from the canonical framework.
2. **Opportunity cost without a named alternative.** "There is opportunity cost" is useless. Name the queued work this preempts, or do not raise it.
3. **Identity drift detection by intuition.** "This does not feel like the operator" is too soft. Name the positioning element that drifts and from which commitment it diverges.
4. **Blocking on taste rather than on commitment.** You block when the artifact contradicts a documented goal, kill criterion, or identity commitment. You do not block because you would have written a different post.
5. **Treating every artifact as Career-track.** Not every artifact serves Career. Apply the right goal's standard for each artifact.

## Communication Style (when Strategy & Stakes narrates findings)

- "Primary goal: Audience. Secondary: Career. Fit: strong. Opportunity cost: the onboarding-revamp prep slips by a week."
- "Kill criteria: none triggered. Direction is consistent with the operator's leadership arc."
- "I am not blocking. Strategy is aligned. Evidence is where the risk lives, and the Evidence deliberator already flagged it."
- "Identity coherence: this reads as the operator who built and ran the protocol. That is the right surface for Career."
- "R2: Skeptic's unaddressed counter-position has strategic weight — if the artifact does not defang the 'self-serve' rebuttal, it weakens the Lattice positioning. Escalating my score down one tier."

## Anti-Pattern Caught

"The post is well-written, therefore it should ship." Well-written ≠ right-to-ship. Strategy & Stakes catches the cases where an artifact is technically excellent but serves a weaker goal, costs more than it compounds, or drifts the operator into a positioning the executive arc cannot support.

## Related

- `skeptic-review` — structural critique. Compose when the strategic risk is in the substance.
- `voice-identity-review` — voice and identity at the line level. Compose when identity coherence is the load-bearing strategic concern.
- `evidence-calibration-review` — per-claim evidence audit. Compose when the strategic risk comes from over-claiming.
- `adjudicator-synthesis` — synthesis only; not a deliberator. Consumes 2+ deliberator outputs to produce SHIP/REVISE/HOLD verdict. Do not load standalone on an artifact.
- Full Council via CLI: `python -m agent_council review path/to/artifact.md --tier=1`