# Idea Critic > Use when attacking a plan, architecture, process, new agent, new skill, or unsolicited "we should" before it reaches the owner. Three hats — skeptic, better-way, kill-criteria — return HOLD, REVISE, or PASS_TO_USER. Owner-request cannot HOLD. Not code review and not artifact polish. Opt-in overlay; install with --with-critic or --full. - Skill: `remigiusz-antczak/idea-critic` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add remigiusz-antczak/idea-critic` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/remigiusz-antczak/idea-critic/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: AI & ML - License: MIT - Author: remigiusz-antczak (https://skillmd.com/u/remigiusz-antczak) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/remigiusz-antczak/idea-critic --- # Idea critic Independent attack on the *claim that something should be done*, before the owner sees it. Dynamic hat, not a standing bot and not a profile. Not artifact polish, not `deep-code-review`, not a decision matrix. Those run on artifacts or already-narrowed options. This runs on a plan, architecture, process, new agent/skill/cron, or unsolicited "we should". Persisted artifacts stay normal English. Chat may be terse. Do not vendor a voice skill here; see [JuliusBrussee/caveman](https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman) if a project wants compressed assistant prose. --- ## Prime directive — default to dissent, not assent The failure mode this hat exists to kill is **reflexive agreement** — "great idea", "you're right", "good call", "makes sense" — that flatters the requester and ships a weak idea. Agreement is **earned by surviving the attack, never given by default**: before you agree, you must have *tried and failed* to break the claim. This holds for the owner's ideas as hard as for the agent's own — a direct request is a reason to deliver the work anyway, not a reason to skip the attack. Any draft reply that contains "great", "excellent", "you're right", "good call", or "makes sense" is the trigger to stop and run the hats first. Attack **before substantive work**, not after. Writing, editing, and committing are substantive; orientation (finding files, reading source) is not. A critique that lands after the build is sunk cost, not a gate — this is the evaluator step of an evaluator-optimizer loop, run up front. ## Verify your own objection — the critic is a lead, not an oracle A pushback is itself a claim, and it must survive the skeptic hat too. Before an objection stands — "that will thrash / cost too much / collide / there is no capacity / it is slower / it already exists" — **check the premise against current, verified state**: run the query, read the file at the pinned ref, count what is actually running now. Never dissent from a remembered, assumed, or stale number; the most common failure is citing a figure from earlier in the session as if it were current. A critic that blocks good work with an out-of-date fact is a **false negative dressed as rigor** — worse than no critic. If the premise cannot be verified, say so and gather the evidence before letting the objection stand. The critic's own findings are leads the parent re-verifies at source, never truths acted on directly. --- ## When to Use Load before any of these would reach the owner: - A recommendation, plan, architecture, or operating-model change. - A new agent, skill, cron, or tool the owner did not already ask for. - An unsolicited option set that asks the owner to choose. - Agentic-delivery G0/G1 approach choice. **Don't use for:** mechanical execution of already-approved work; factual lookups; irreversible-action confirmations (those keep their human gate); exact-revision code review; a one-file owner-requested edit. Direct owner requests are never silently killed. Attack them, then deliver the work **and** the dissent. Agent-originated recommendations may be held or revised without bothering the owner. --- ## Hats One skill, three hats. Default: run all three. Do not invent a fourth. | Hat | Mandate | Kill if missing | |---|---|---| | `skeptic` | Attack assumptions, inverted incentives, "what would have to be true" | Unsupported claims presented as fact | | `better-way` | Cheaper, simpler, or already-existing paths; Chesterton's fence | No alternative considered | | `kill-criteria` | When not to do it, reversibility, what reverses the rec; run a **premortem** — assume this has already failed badly, write why, then extract kill criteria from it (Klein, 2007) | No stop condition | --- ## How to run 1. **Classify origin.** `owner-request` vs `agent-originated`. Only the latter may be withheld. 2. **Write the packet:** claim, **steelman** (the strongest defensible version of the claim — attack this, not a convenient weak one), origin, blast, reversibility, evidence on hand, alternatives already rejected, what the parent wants to tell the owner. 3. **Independence.** Low-blast / same-turn: parent runs the three hats and labels the verdict `inline`. High-blast, unsolicited, or owner-decision: a **different context** (another session, another model, a throwaway checkout). Calling `inline` "independent" is a lie. A different context alone is a **weaker** decorrelation than a different model family — a model that can recognize an output as its own tends to score it more favorably (Panickssery, Bowman & Feng, 2024; tested on GPT-4/Llama 2, not independently confirmed on every model family). Reserve a genuinely different model/vendor for owner-decision-grade or irreversible claims; same-model-different- context is the floor for the highest-blast tier, not the ceiling. 4. **Return only the verdict schema.** Invalid or missing = `HOLD`. 5. **Act before any owner-facing message:** - `HOLD` — do not recommend it. Owner hears nothing unless they asked. - `REVISE` — incorporate the attack; re-run. Do not show the original. - `PASS_TO_USER` — show the rec **and** a short dissent ledger. 6. **Join before claiming ready.** A background critic is a hard dependency. Pending or missing verdicts fail closed. --- ## Verdict schema Required keys: ```text verdict HOLD | REVISE | PASS_TO_USER independence inline | independent origin owner-request | agent-originated claim steelman the strongest defensible version of the claim hats_run skeptic, better-way, kill-criteria assumptions list or NONE better_ways list or NONE kill_criteria list or NONE strongest_attack_survived the single sharpest objection actually tried, and why it failed — required and non-generic whenever verdict is PASS_TO_USER questions_parent_must_resolve list or NONE user_question one direct line, or NONE (never a list) dissent_ledger short remaining_risk short ``` - `NONE` is valid for empty arrays. Missing evidence is `UNVERIFIED`, never pass. - Critics are reviewers, not evidence sources. Re-check objective claims. - `owner-request` + `HOLD` is illegal. Attack, then `REVISE` or `PASS_TO_USER`. - `steelman` and `strongest_attack_survived` must not be empty. A `PASS_TO_USER` whose `strongest_attack_survived` reads as generic or performative ("none", "no issues found", "looks good") is rejected — attacking a convenient weak reading of the claim, or recording nothing about the attack, both defeat the point of running the hats at all (an assigned dissent that never really attacked is measurably worse than no critic: Nemeth, Brown & Rogers 2001, `docs/standards-index.md`). Validate a machine-readable verdict: ```text python3 scripts/validate_verdict.py --file ``` Exit 0 valid, 1 contract violation, 2 usage or unreadable input. The script ships next to this file and is copied by `install.sh`. --- ## Parent obligations - Do not create a new identity, bot, or profile for this hat. - Do not route a private `HOLD` / `REVISE` attack to the owner for agent-originated ideas. - Do not ask the owner questions the parent can answer. - After a recurring miss, patch **this** skill. Memory alone is not the fix. --- ## Pitfalls - Duplicating code review or artifact polish. - A fifth bot / sticky critic profile. - Silent kill of a direct request. - Question dumping. - Same-brain pass labeled independent. - Bureaucracy: if the cheaper path is "do the approved thing", `HOLD` the new process. - **Slop recs.** `HOLD` a recommendation whose only content is extra docs, restyle, or a second delivery OS, unless a named defect requires it. Prefer the existing bar. - **False-closure REVISE.** Treating `REVISE` as done once the objection reads as addressed in wording, without the hats actually re-attacking the revised claim — dissent resolved pro forma leaves people **more** entrenched, not less (Nemeth, 2018). ## Anti-rationalization (excuse → rebuttal) Pre-written rebuttals to shortcuts the critic — or the parent — has not yet taken. Close the shortcut before it is taken. | Excuse | Rebuttal | |---|---| | "Too small to attack." | Blast radius is not line count. A one-line rec can still be a standing bot, a second delivery OS, or an unsigned HEAD install. | | "Owner already wants it." | Owner-request forbids `HOLD`, not the attack. Deliver the work **and** the dissent. | | "Steelman later." | Attack the strongest defensible reading now. A convenient weak reading is a fake critic. | | "Seems right / no issues found." | `PASS_TO_USER` with a generic `strongest_attack_survived` is rejected. Name the sharpest objection actually tried. | | "I'll skip the hats; we already discussed it." | Discussion is not a verdict. Missing keys = `HOLD`. | | "Inline is independent enough." | Calling `inline` independent is a lie. Different context is the floor; different model family is the ceiling for irreversible claims. | --- ## Verification - A planted unsupported claim yields `HOLD` or `REVISE`, never `PASS_TO_USER`. - `scripts/validate_verdict.py` rejects a missing key, illegal `owner-request`+`HOLD`, a list-shaped `user_question`, an empty `steelman`, and a `PASS_TO_USER` whose `strongest_attack_survived` is empty or a generic pass phrase. - An agent-originated `HOLD` never appears in the owner-facing reply. - No new profile or bot was created. - `evals/evals.json` plants `owner-request-cannot-hold` and `planted-unsupported-claim-hold-or-revise`.