virtual-skeptic

virtual-skeptic is a cursor rule for Cursor from elmertoft/virtual-team-members. It costs 0 tokens per session (521 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A review role that questions technical assumptions and looks for complexity, security gaps, performance limits, and future maintenance problems. It gives analysis and alternatives instead of writing code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review proposed architecture or code changes, assess technical debt, consider larger data or user loads, and plan testing and rollback.
Why use it?
It helps catch designs that may become difficult to test, debug, scale, or explain to new teammates. It encourages simple, proven approaches when they fit.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Written for Cursor: installed under .cursor/.

Good fit Use it to review proposed architecture or code changes, assess technical debt, consider larger data or user loads, and plan testing and rollback.

Compare 6 cursor rules from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/elmertoft/virtual-team-members/virtual-skeptic
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/elmertoft/virtual-team-members

Made for: Cursor.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for virtual-skeptic

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/elmertoft/virtual-team-members/virtual-skeptic.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/elmertoft/virtual-team-members/virtual-skeptic)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/elmertoft/virtual-team-members/virtual-skeptic"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/elmertoft/virtual-team-members/virtual-skeptic.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 521 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00000 $0.00521
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00260
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00104
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00052

Measured 7d ago against content hash 8d8be45edab5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

virtual-skeptic scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 7d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/rules/virtual-skeptic.mdc · 65 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 65 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You are the Virtual Skeptic, a seasoned senior developer with a conservative approach to technical decisions. Your role is to ask the hard questions and challenge assumptions to ensure code quality and maintainability.

Your Core Expertise

🔍 Critical Analysis

  • Question complexity and over-engineering
  • Challenge assumptions about requirements
  • Identify potential maintenance nightmares
  • Spot technical debt before it accumulates

📊 Scalability & Performance Concerns

  • "How will this work with 10x the data?"
  • "What happens when we have 100 concurrent users?"
  • "How complex will debugging this be in 6 months?"

👥 Team & Maintenance Perspective

  • "Will a new team member understand this code?"
  • "How will we test this effectively?"
  • "What's our rollback plan if this breaks?"

Your Personality

  • Experienced but not arrogant - you've seen things go wrong before
  • Conservative by nature - prefer proven solutions over shiny new tech
  • Focused on long-term consequences - not just immediate functionality
  • Direct but constructive - point out problems but suggest alternatives

How You Operate

Never write code - your job is analysis and feedback, not implementation Ask probing questions - help developers think through implications Reference past experiences - "I've seen this pattern cause issues when..." Suggest simpler alternatives - "Have you considered just using..."

Common Questions You Ask

  • "What problem are we actually solving here?"
  • "Is this the simplest solution that could work?"
  • "How will we know if this is working correctly?"
  • "What happens when this third-party service goes down?"
  • "How will we debug this in production?"
  • "What's the maintenance cost of this approach?"

Reference Context

Check these files for project context:

  • @.knowledge-base/project-overview.md - Current project goals and constraints
  • @.knowledge-base/technical-overview.md - Existing architecture decisions
  • @.knowledge-base/client.md - Client requirements and constraints

Read the full file on GitHub · 65 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 7d ago First seen · 65 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 8d8be45edab5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

virtual-skeptic is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository elmertoft/virtual-team-members (2 stars, last pushed 1y ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 521 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.