thkt /challenge - GO / NO-GO verdict on a proposal
Judge the proposal in two phases, so the next decision starts from a verified GO / NO-GO.
Input
$ARGUMENTS carries the target. It may be a proposal file path or a description. If empty, stop and ask the user to specify the target; do not infer it from the conversation. When multi-line, the first line is the target title.
Phase 1: Grill
Verify the proposal from evidence, then return only the unsettled questions to the user.
Step 1: Settle the questions with evidence
Every judgment below is decided by the table, never by advisor confidence.
| Subject | Condition | Treatment when it holds | Treatment when it does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| A question | Evidence settles it to one answer. One needing a choice, such as priority or scope, does not settle | subagents verify its answer in parallel | Send it unverified to the unsettled pile |
| A verified fact | The targeted state already holds, or it contradicts the proposal. advisor opinion alone does not meet it | Skip Phase 2 and put the grounds in the Why | Proceed on the claims that still hold |
| An unsettled question | It is irreversible or high-impact | Ask it via AskUserQuestion. Cap 7 questions | Proceed on the advisor hypothesis as an assumption, and keep them all in the Why |
- Read
.claude/OUTCOME.md. If absent, infer the outcome from $ARGUMENTS and the conversation and confirm it via AskUserQuestion. The Phase 2 outcome attack uses it as its evaluation axis, so settle it rather than leaving it out - List the open questions in the proposal and sort them by the table
- Run the verification loop. subagents verify the answers in parallel while advisor re-checks the sorting and names the next evidence
- Break when more evidence no longer changes the sorting. Cap 3 rounds. Send whatever the loop left unsettled to the unsettled pile
- Apply the table to the verified facts. When the treatment skips Phase 2, drop straight to the Output
- Have advisor attach a hypothesis plus reversibility and blast-radius to each unsettled question, then route them by the table
Step 2: Build the handoff
Aggregate the Step 1 findings into the shape below. Phase 2 takes this and nothing else as its input.
| Field | Source |
|---|---|
| approach | one-line summary of what the proposal does |
| decisions | settled architecture-level decisions, excluding terminology checks and scope minutiae |
| trade-offs | surfaced trade-offs |
| referenced_files | files read |
| outcome_ref | .claude/OUTCOME.md path plus a digest of its Behavior / Non-goals / Constraints. If it is absent, the outcome confirmed in Step 1 |
Phase 2: Devil
Land the handoff on two critic-design, adversarially probing for holes.
Step 1: Spawn the two
Both spawn prompts carry the target title, the handoff, and the path of a design document like ARCHITECTURE.md. Omit the outcome Pass when no outcome is available. The table below decides what differs per Pass.
| Pass | Target of the attack | Extra input |
|---|---|---|
| critic-design (internal) | The proposal itself | None |
| critic-design (outcome) | Outcome fit and non-goal / constraint breaches | outcome_ref |
- Spawn two critic-design via Agent in parallel. subagent_type is critic-design
- Wait for both. Each returns what its agent definition specifies: verdict (confirmed / weakened / needs_revision) and weaknesses (items carrying viewpoint, severity, finding, evidence, disconfirming probe)
Step 2: Reach the verdict
Reconcile the weaknesses, drop the overlap, and aggregate the assumptions into VERDICT_SCHEMA { verdict, assumptions: [{ text, irreversible, underspecified }] }. Apply the table below top to bottom and take the verdict of the first row that matches.
| Condition | Verdict |
|---|---|
An irreversible or underspecified assumption remains, or assumptions exceed 7 |
NO-GO. Never hand-override it to GO |
| Either pass returned needs_revision | NO-GO |
| Both passes returned confirmed | GO |
| Anything else | Conditional GO |
Output
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Verdict | One GO / NO-GO line. Note what must hold on a conditional GO, and which verdict-table row matched on a NO-GO |
| Why | Fact-verification results, the two critic-design verdicts, and every unsettled question advanced on assumption with reversibility |
| Actionable items | Top 3 concrete actions of keep / remove / revise |