Decision Critic

Decision Critic

When this skill activates, you become a structured decision critic. Your role is to systematically stress-test reasoning before commitment, surfacing hidden assumptions, verifying claims, and generating adversarial perspectives.

Triggers

Activate when the user:

• Validate my thinking on...
• Poke holes in this decision
• Criticize this approach
• Stress-test this tradeoff
• Presents a decision rationale and asks for criticism

Process

DECOMPOSITION (1-2)    Extract claims, assumptions, constraints, judgments
        |              Assign stable IDs (C1, A1, K1, J1)
        v
VERIFICATION (3-4)     Generate verification questions
        |              Answer independently (factored verification)
        v              Mark: VERIFIED | FAILED | UNCERTAIN
CHALLENGE (5-6)        Contrarian perspective + alternative framing
        |
        v
SYNTHESIS (7)          Verdict: STAND (clean or flagged) | REVISE | ESCALATE

Scripts

decision-critic.py

python3 .claude/skills/decision-critic/scripts/decision-critic.py \
  --step-number <1-7> \
  --total-steps 7 \
  --decision "<decision text>" \
  --context "<constraints and background>" \
  --thoughts "<your accumulated analysis, IDs, and status from all previous steps>"

Exit Codes:

• 0: Successful completion
• 1: Invalid arguments or missing required parameters
• 2: Analysis failed or incomplete

When to Use

Use this skill when:

• Making a consequential decision that is hard to reverse
• Evaluating a plan, ADR, or design before commitment
• You want structured adversarial feedback, not just a second opinion

Use the independent-thinker agent instead when:

• You need strategic challenge on direction (whether, not how)
• The question is about project scope or priorities, not technical reasoning

Anti-Patterns

Verification

After execution:

• All claims have status: VERIFIED, FAILED, or UNCERTAIN
• Contrarian perspective generated (Step 5)
• Final verdict is one of: STAND (clean or flagged), REVISE, ESCALATE. A STAND is flagged (capped, not clean) when the rewrite-regression check answered questions 1 through 4 but left question 5 (institutional incentive) unanswered
• Inversion analysis covers at least 3 failure modes
• Rewrite-regression check applied as a halt criterion when the decision is a rewrite, refactor, or migration justified by improvement. Evaluate this check during verification (Steps 3 and 4), before settling on a verdict: a STAND verdict is not valid while the rewrite-regression halt is open. If the proposer can answer only the v0 win and not the baseline, the v1 projection, and the regression plan, HALT the decision: ESCALATE when only the v0 win exists, REVISE for partial-answer cases per the reference table, rather than rubber-stamp it. When questions 1 through 4 are answered but question 5 (the institutional incentive that produced the original problem) is not, cap the verdict at a flagged STAND, not a clean STAND: record the unaddressed friction as a flag instead of rubber-stamping a clean pass. See Rewrite-Regression Check.

References

• Chesterton's Fence - Understand why something exists before removing or changing it
• Conway's Law - System structure mirrors org communication structure; apply when a diff crosses a module boundary
• Gall's Law - Complex working systems evolved from simple working systems
• Fat Tails - Extreme outcomes dominate fat-tailed domains; distrust averages and Gaussian risk metrics
• Boy Scout Rule - Scope boundaries for incremental improvement decisions
• Brandolini's Law - Refutation costs more than assertion; allocate review burden by claim asymmetry
• Falsifiability - Reject claims with no measurable success criterion
• Survivorship Bias - Avoid drawing conclusions from winners while ignoring failures
• Systems Thinking - Trace second-order effects and feedback loops in decisions
• Rewrite-Regression Check - Halt criterion for "v0 was faster, v1 is worse" rewrites

Academic Grounding

This workflow synthesizes three empirically-validated techniques:

1. Chain-of-Verification (Dhuliawala et al., 2023) - Factored verification prevents confirmation bias
2. Self-Consistency (Wang et al., 2023) - Multiple reasoning paths reveal disagreement
3. Multi-Expert Prompting (Wang et al., 2024) - Diverse perspectives catch blind spots

Inversion Thinking Protocol

Before finalizing any decision, apply inversion to identify failure modes:

Step 1: State the Goal

Clearly articulate what success looks like.

Example: "Make the agent system reliable and maintainable"

Step 2: Invert the Goal

Flip it to identify failure modes: "How would we ensure the agent system fails?"

Step 3: List Failure Scenarios

Brainstorm specific ways to achieve failure:

• Remove all validation gates
• Allow circular agent delegation
• Make handoffs implicit
• Hide dependencies
• Skip documentation
• No testing strategy

Step 4: Reverse to Success Criteria

Convert each failure mode into a success criterion:

• Failure: "No validation gates" → Success: "Automated validation at every phase"
• Failure: "Circular delegation" → Success: "Clear hierarchy preventing loops"
• Failure: "Implicit handoffs" → Success: "Explicit handoff protocol"

Step 5: Validate Decision Against Inverted Criteria

Check if the decision being reviewed addresses each failure mode.

Output Template:

## Inversion Analysis

### Goal

[What success looks like]

### Inverted Goal (Failure)

[How to ensure failure]

### Failure Modes

1. [Failure mode 1]
2. [Failure mode 2]
3. [Failure mode 3]

### Success Criteria (Reversed)

1. [Success criterion 1 - addresses failure mode 1]
2. [Success criterion 2 - addresses failure mode 2]
3. [Success criterion 3 - addresses failure mode 3]

### Decision Validation

- [ ] Addresses failure mode 1: [Evidence]
- [ ] Addresses failure mode 2: [Evidence]
- [ ] Addresses failure mode 3: [Evidence]

Application: Use inversion thinking as final check before approving plans or ADRs.