# Pairwise Comparison

> Tactic: rank gaps through relative comparison rather than absolute scoring, suited to hard-to-quantify situations

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

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# Pairwise Comparison

When absolute scoring is hard to perform reliably (vague gap descriptions, incomparable dimensions, large rater bias), establish a gap ranking through pairwise relative comparison, then ensure the judgments are contradiction-free via a consistency check.

## Orchestration Intent

Absolute scoring requires raters to assign a value to each gap independently, which is easily affected by anchoring effects. Relative comparison ("A is more worth prioritizing than B") has a lower cognitive load and yields more stable judgments. This tactic implements an AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) style pairwise-comparison flow: first collect relative judgments for all gap pairs, then check judgment consistency, and finally synthesize the final ranking.

Inconsistent judgments (such as a cycle of A>B, B>C, C>A) are detected by the consistency-check SOP and trigger a correction round, until the consistency ratio CR < 0.1.

## Available SOPs

| SOP | Responsibility | When to call |
|-----|------|---------|
| gap-pairwise-judgment | Make a relative-importance judgment for each gap pair (1-9 Saaty scale) | Mandatory, first step |
| consistency-check | Compute the consistency ratio (CR), identify contradictory judgment pairs | Mandatory, after each comparison round |
| priority-synthesis | Synthesize final priority weights and ranking from the pairwise-comparison matrix | Mandatory, after CR passes |

## Orchestration Pattern

**Default (standard flow)**
1. gap-pairwise-judgment: perform comparisons for all N×(N-1)/2 gap pairs, producing a comparison matrix
2. consistency-check: compute CR; if CR ≥ 0.1, flag contradictory judgment pairs and return correction suggestions
3. (If correction needed) re-call gap-pairwise-judgment for the contradictory pairs only, up to 3 rounds
4. priority-synthesis: synthesize the final ranking once CR < 0.1

**Simplified (gap count ≤ 5)**
- Same as Default, but with fewer comparison pairs (≤10 pairs), usually passing the consistency check in a single round

**Deep (gap count > 15)**
- First use scoring-matrix-construction for preliminary screening, reducing gaps to ≤15
- Then run the standard pairwise flow
- priority-synthesis additionally outputs a sensitivity analysis (which gaps' rankings are most sensitive to a single judgment change)

## Minimum Yield

- A complete N×N pairwise comparison matrix (all gap pairs judged, no gaps missing)
- A final consistency ratio CR < 0.1 (hard constraint, cannot be skipped)
- A final priority ranking (including each gap's normalized weight)
- A correction history (if contradiction correction occurred, record which judgments were modified and why)

## Yield Report

After execution, report to the calling strategy:
- Gap count / number of comparison pairs / correction rounds
- The final CR value
- The top 3 gaps and their weights
- The least stable gaps (cases where the weight gap with an adjacent gap < 0.05)

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## Available Tactics

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

| Tactic | When to use |
| --- | --- |
| hypothesis-formation-scoring-matrix-construction | Tactic: orchestrate multi-dimensional scoring SOPs to build a comprehensive assessment matrix for all gaps |

## Available SOPs

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

| SOP | When to use |
| --- | --- |
| consistency-check | SOP: Check the transitive consistency of a pairwise judgment matrix, identify inconsistent entries, and suggest corrections |
| gap-pairwise-judgment | SOP: Make a criterion-by-criterion relative priority judgment between two gaps and output the preference result |
| priority-synthesis | SOP: synthesize all scoring data into a final gap priority list and attack-path suggestions |

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