strategy-critique

Reads a strategy doc and writes a red-team critique with gaps, risks, and missing assumptions. Adopts an adversarial but constructive stance. Use when the user says "strategy critique", "red team this

SKILL.md

GitHub

Strategy Critique

Red-team any strategy document. Find what's missing before reality does.

Workflow

  1. Read the strategy doc — Accept a vault path, file path, URL, or inline text. Identify:

    • Stated goals and success metrics
    • Key assumptions (explicit and implicit)
    • Proposed approach and timeline
    • Resource requirements
    • Dependencies and constraints
  2. Identify assumptions — List every assumption the strategy relies on, including:

    • Explicit assumptions — stated in the doc
    • Implicit assumptions — unstated but required for the strategy to work
    • Hidden assumptions — things the author likely takes for granted
  3. Stress-test each assumption — For each assumption:

    • How confident should we be? (HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW)
    • What evidence supports it?
    • What would falsify it?
    • What happens to the strategy if it's wrong?
  4. Find gaps — Look for:

    • Missing stakeholders — who is affected but not considered?
    • Unaddressed risks — what failure modes aren't covered?
    • Resource gaps — what's needed but not budgeted?
    • Timeline gaps — what dependencies could cause delays?
    • Competitive gaps — how might competitors respond?
    • Second-order effects — what downstream consequences are ignored?
  5. Score overall robustness — Rate the strategy:

    • Assumption quality: How solid are the foundations? (1-10)
    • Completeness: How many important areas are covered? (1-10)
    • Adaptability: How well does it handle surprises? (1-10)
    • Overall robustness: Weighted average (1-10)
  6. Write constructive recommendations — For each major gap or weak assumption, suggest a concrete fix.

Output Format

## Strategy Critique: [Document Title]

### Summary
[2-3 sentence assessment — what's strong, what's concerning]

### Robustness Score: [X]/10
- Assumption quality: [X]/10
- Completeness: [X]/10
- Adaptability: [X]/10

### Assumptions Audit

| # | Assumption | Type | Confidence | If Wrong |
|---|-----------|------|-----------|----------|
| 1 | [assumption] | Explicit | HIGH | [consequence] |
| 2 | [assumption] | Implicit | LOW | [consequence] |

### Gaps Found

#### 1. [Gap Title]
**What's missing**: ...
**Why it matters**: ...
**Suggested fix**: ...

### Strongest Elements
- [What's genuinely well-done — be specific]

### Recommendations
1. [Highest-priority fix]
2. [Second-priority fix]
3. [Third-priority fix]

Behavior

  • Be adversarial but constructive — the goal is to strengthen the strategy, not tear it down
  • Acknowledge what's genuinely strong before critiquing
  • Distinguish between fatal flaws and nice-to-haves
  • If the strategy is actually solid, say so — don't manufacture criticisms
  • Save output to vault if requested: vault/decisions/critique-[topic]-[YYYY-MM-DD].md