pm-assumption-rigor-audit

• SKILL.mdcore · 12,927 bytes

# Assumption Rigor Audit Skill

## What this skill changes vs. default behavior

By default, Claude accepts validation at face value — "we ran a survey and users liked it, so it's validated" passes without challenge. It rarely asks whether the *riskiest* assumption was the one tested, whether the method was strong enough for the decision it's meant to support, whether "would you use this?" answers were mistaken for evidence, whether success was defined *before* the test, or whether the sample was big enough to mean anything. This audit forces four things: every finding names the violated principle; the *decision the test is meant to support* is the unit of judgment (rigor scales to what's at stake); evidence claims are tested for signal vs. noise; and findings come severity-rated by decision damage with a concrete fix.

This is an **evaluative** skill: it auto-runs whenever a validation plan, experiment, discovery approach, or a "we validated…" claim is being reviewed — and as the validation step after `pm-assumption-testing` produces a test plan.

**Scope discipline.** When invoked directly (the user named this audit), review **only this concern** — don't pull in sibling audits. It runs alongside other lenses only when the `pm-product-review` orchestrator or a generative skill calls it under `docs/orchestration-policy.md`, where it sits in **the always-relevant PM lens — auto-runs**. Explicit scope always wins.

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## The framework — what to check and what a violation looks like