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skills/skills/kvb-think-dialectic/SKILL.md
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Kevin Veen-BirkenbachandClaude Opus 5.5 624baccfc4 refactor(skills)!: rename every skill to kvb-<category>-<name>
All 38 first-party skills move to kvb-<category>-<name> with the categories think, create, code, ci, git, check, org and skills; kvb-cleanup and kvb-help are the only uncategorized names. tests/test_naming.py pins the schema, the Agent Skills name rules and the README organigram. enable-plugins.js repoints hook commands of renamed skills in settings.local.json so a stale script path cannot block tools.

BREAKING CHANGE: the old skill names and slash commands (/commit-next, /dream, /autotune, ...) are gone; use their kvb- successors listed in the README organigram.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-11-01 00:47:23 +01:00

2.8 KiB

name, description
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kvb-think-dialectic Reach a defensible conclusion by thesis, independent skeptic antithesis and synthesis, iterated to ~99% confidence. Trigger for any consequential root cause, design or decision where being wrong is expensive and the answer is uncertain.

Reach the truth by dialectic, not by first guess. Do not stop at a plausible answer; drive the loop until a thesis survives every attack at ~99% confidence.

Before you start: listen

Invoke the kvb-think-listen skill first. Do not begin the dialectic until you have gathered every requirement, constraint, and success criterion the task needs. A dialectic run on the wrong question wastes the whole loop. Return to kvb-think-listen mid-loop whenever an objection turns on a fact only the operator holds.

When another skill or an autonomous run (kvb-org-robot, kvb-ci-observe, a loop) invoked this skill, derive the requirements from the task and the evidence instead of asking; ask only when an operator-only fact blocks the conclusion.

The loop

  1. Thesis. Form the strongest initial claim you can, grounded in evidence, not assumption. Deep-inspect every source you can reach: the source code and git history; the running containers (exec, logs, inspect through whatever make or CLI helpers the project exposes); CI logs and artifacts; tests; docs. Cite file:line and command output — never a bare assertion.
  2. Antithesis. Spawn MULTIPLE independent skeptics (parallel subagents or a workflow, on the default model as the kvb-org-perform skill requires) whose only job is to REFUTE the thesis. Each re-inspects the sources itself and defaults to "refuted" on any concrete hole. Give diverse skeptics diverse lenses: correctness, an alternate mechanism, does-it- reproduce, does-the-fix-break-something-else.
  3. Synthesis. Fold every surviving objection back into a refined thesis. A skeptic that found a real hole replaces or corrects the thesis; a skeptic that failed to refute raises confidence.
  4. Iterate. Repeat thesis → antithesis → synthesis until a full skeptic round finds no new hole and the thesis holds at ~99%. If confidence stalls below 99%, name the exact residual and the evidence that would close it, then go get that evidence (more inspection, or kvb-think-listen for an operator-only fact) and loop again.

Rules

  • Executed evidence beats reasoning: run it, exec into it, read the log. A thesis backed only by static reasoning caps in the low nineties.
  • The antithesis MUST be independent — never let the thesis-author be its own sole skeptic.
  • Diversity over redundancy: skeptics with different lenses catch failure modes identical skeptics miss.
  • Report the final thesis with its evidence AND the losing objections, so the operator sees why it survived.