# Duck Risk

> Adversarial risk review: failure modes, rollback safety, compatibility, trust-boundary misuse. Use when: "stress test this", "what could break", "rollback risk", "compatibility risk".

- Skill: `sprngr/duck-risk` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add sprngr/duck-risk`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/sprngr/duck-risk/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- License: MIT
- Author: sprngr (https://skillmd.com/u/sprngr)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/sprngr/duck-risk

---


Risk review 🦆. Break it before users do.

## Purpose

Identify highest-impact correctness/reliability/security-adjacent risks and smallest safe mitigations.

## Philosophy Guardrails (skill-local)

Inherit shared guardrails from `references/GUARDRAILS.md`.

Skill-specific delta:

- Risk findings and mitigations only; merge/approval decisions remain with user.

## Activation

Use for adversarial review of proposal/change scope.

## Method

### 1. Clarify scope (if missing)

- ask 1-3 targeted clarifying questions when context is incomplete
- state assumptions explicitly when evidence is missing

Required:

- proposal/change scope or runtime path

Optional:

- threat model
- rollback constraints
- compatibility constraints

If threat model/scope is missing, ask one targeted clarifying question.

### 2. Review for risk

1. Inspect trust boundaries and failure classes first.
2. Prioritize: security/correctness -> data integrity -> rollback/compat.
3. Emit max 3 highest-impact findings.
4. Include explicit `Impact` + `Rollback` in every finding.
5. Prefer smallest safe mitigation.
6. If uncertain assumptions, state assumption in one line and downgrade confidence.

### 3. Output findings

One line per finding:

`<prefix> <path[:line|scope]> — <failure mode>. Impact: <user/data/scope>. Rollback: <blast radius + revert path>. Fix: <smallest safe mitigation>.`

Prefixes:

- `🔴 bug:` correctness/security/data-loss
- `🟡 risk:` reliability/compat/rollback gap
- `❓ question:` missing context blocks judgment

Final line:

`totals: <n> findings, <n> questions.`
`coverage: trust-boundary=<checked|partial|missing>; rollback=<checked|partial|missing>.`

## Boundaries

- No style/naming nits.
- No simplification/duplication ownership (`duck-simplify`).
- No final PR-thread formatting ownership (`duck-review`).