Individual skill
devils-advocate
Adversarially challenge research assumptions, mechanisms, and arguments in writing. Use when stress-testing a claim or design before committing to it. Not for an interactive oral drill or a full referee report; use $grill-me or a review agent.
skills/devils-advocate/SKILL.md
Source commit 08dd9bdf9367f7321c27b7db8c08a125598a613f
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- Last checked
- Nov 6, 2026
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- Repository stars (not skill ratings)
- 150
- Repository last updated
- Nov 3, 2026
- License
- MIT
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- academic-research Repository topic
- ai-tools Repository topic
- claude Repository topic
- claude-code Repository topic
- latex Repository topic
- phd Repository topic
- research-workflow Repository topic
- codex Repository topic
- design Derived category
- writing Derived category
- testing Derived category
- research Derived category
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SKILL.mdcore · 7,085 bytesSKILL.mdcore · 7,085 bytesSKILL.mdcore · 7,085 bytesreferences/competing-hypotheses.mddoc · 5,089 bytes
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# Devil's Advocate Skill
> Challenge research assumptions and identify weaknesses in your arguments.
## Purpose
Based on Scott Cunningham's Part 3: "Creating Devil's Advocate Agents for Tough Problems" - addressing the "LLM thing of over-confidence in diagnosing a problem."
**For formal code audits with replication scripts and referee reports, use the Referee 2 agent instead (`.claude/agents/referee2-reviewer.md`).** This skill is for quick adversarial feedback on arguments, not systematic audits.
## When to Use
- Before submitting a paper
- When stuck on a research problem