route

Decision-making route

When to use this skill

You have a decision to make and don't already know which technique fits. If you do know, invoke the command directly and skip this skill. This skill is for mid-task triage and cold-start human invocation — it is explicitly bypassable, and plan steps should bypass it.

The rubric

tribunal (cost: High)

Decision shape: You have N≥2 concrete options, the decision is load-bearing and hard to reverse, and you want rigorous deliberation with rebuttals before committing. Use when stakes justify the ceremony.

Signals:

• Irreversible or expensive-to-undo
• You need a written record of the reasoning (rebuttals, trade-offs) that will survive the decision, not just a pick
• You want an honest "unable to decide" escape hatch

Not this if: You need a quick tiebreak and the decision is reversible → use adversarial. Not this if: the contest is over values rather than evidence (different stakeholders want genuinely different things) → use council.

Invoke: /decision-making:tribunal "<decision + options>"

adversarial (cost: Medium)

Decision shape: You have N≥2 concrete options and want a quick tiebreak with steelmanned briefs. One round of advocates, no rebuttals, no iteration.

Signals:

• Decision is reversible or moderate-stakes
• You've been going back and forth and want to force a pick
• The cost of delay exceeds the cost of picking wrong

Not this if: Stakes are high, you want rebuttals, or you want an honest "unable to decide" escape hatch → use tribunal.

Invoke: /decision-making:adversarial "<decision + N options>"

red-team (cost: Medium)

Decision shape: You have a proposed plan, answer, design, or artifact and want to stress-test it before committing. Verdict is accept | revise | reject.

Signals:

• The plan is still open to critique, not already committed to
• You want someone committed to finding reasons it will fail
• You're about to make it official