Decision Doubt Loop

Decision Doubt Loop

A confident answer is not a correct one. Long sessions turn assumptions into "facts" without anyone noticing. This is the discipline of materializing a fresh-context reviewer — biased to disprove, not approve — before a non-trivial decision stands.

This is not research-verification-gate or research-report-reviewer: those judge a finished artifact at the end. This runs in-flight, per decision, while it is still cheap to change course.

When to use

Run it when about to let a decision stand and at least one of these holds:

• it introduces or changes branching / control flow
• it crosses a module, service, or agent boundary
• it asserts a property no checker can see (thread-safety, an invariant, "these are equivalent", a reduction step in a proof or argument)
• stakes are high: production, security-sensitive logic, irreversible or outward-facing actions, money
• a research conclusion rests on the step (a sourced fact, an inference treated as established, a chosen analytical direction)

Skip it for trivial, easily reversible, or already-verified decisions.

Method — delegate to a fresh context

The point is a reviewer that does not share the context that produced the decision. Do not self-review inline; spawn it.

1. State the decision in one line, plus the single load-bearing assumption it depends on and what would make it wrong.
2. Pick the lens(es) by decision type and delegate to the matching fresh-context reviewer persona, instructed to refute:
   • correctness / logic → code-reviewer (code) or proof-checker (a proof or formal argument)
   • boundaries, untrusted input, irreversible effects → security-reviewer
   • "is this actually verified?" → test-reviewer
   • a research inference or sourcing step → paper-reviewer or literature-scout
3. For a multi-axis decision, run the Single-Decision Doubt Review template in agent-group-discuss: independent skeptics, one decision, a refute-or-pass verdict.
4. Resolve. If the reviewer refutes the decision or its load-bearing assumption, course-correct now. If it survives, record that the decision stands and move on.

If fresh-context review is unavailable for a high-risk, irreversible, security-sensitive, or outward-facing decision, do not substitute an inline self-review. Output BLOCKED-FRESH-CONTEXT-UNAVAILABLE, state the decision and why it is gated, and ask for explicit user direction. For lower-risk decisions, you may proceed only after disclosing that the fresh-context check was unavailable and either receiving confirmation or narrowing the decision to a reversible local step.

Output contract

A short visible note: Decision, Load-bearing assumption, Doubt verdict (STANDS | REVISED | BLOCKED | BLOCKED-FRESH-CONTEXT-UNAVAILABLE), and the one change made if revised.

Guardrails

• fresh context is the mechanism — an inline "let me double-check" is the exact failure mode this exists to prevent
• bias the reviewer to disprove; a reviewer that sets out to approve finds nothing
• keep it bounded: one decision, the smallest sufficient reviewer set
• when unsure whether a decision is non-trivial, run it

Recommended templates

When this skill is involved, consider these workflow templates (install via the workflow-templates artifact profile, or --with-deps to pull backing skills):

• autonomous-research-loop-runbook -- Bounded autonomous research-loop runbook with four stop conditions, single-path solving, mandatory cross-agent verification, fresh-agent backtracking, and five-lane broker-routed heavy-compute offload with per-lane safety gates.
• cross-agent-adversarial-review -- Producer-never-confirmer adversarial review of a paper, proof, or code artifact across agent families with a fresh-agent confirmation gate.
• engineering-delivery-loop-runbook -- Bounded build-and-deliver loop runbook: single-path implementation with seen-to-fail proof, cross-agent diff verification, behavior-preserving cleanup, and five-lane broker-routed heavy-compute offload with per-lane safety gates.
• reversible-decision-memo -- Evidence-grounded decision record with named alternatives, source-cited rationale, reversibility class and trip-wires, and a fresh-context adversarial confirmation before the decision stands.
• informal-to-lean-formalization-runbook -- Local-first intake mapping an informal proof to Lean declarations with a scanner-first verification gate separating typecheck status from claim support.