devils-advocate

devils-advocate is a skill for Claude Code from clearsmog/claude-skills. It costs 43 tokens per session (677 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A critical review of a document or slide deck that asks questions about teaching order, prerequisites, missing explanations, notation, and cognitive load.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps review LaTeX, Quarto, and Typst documents and presentations, proposing alternative explanations and identifying gaps or overloaded sections.
Why use it?
It exposes places where readers or students may be confused before the document is finalized.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Good fit It helps review LaTeX, Quarto, and Typst documents and presentations, proposing alternative explanations and identifying gaps or overloaded sections.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/clearsmog/claude-skills/devils-advocate
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.

Any agent
npx skills add clearsmog/claude-skills --skill devils-advocate
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/clearsmog/claude-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

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 devils-advocate

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/clearsmog/claude-skills/devils-advocate/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/clearsmog/claude-skills/devils-advocate)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/clearsmog/claude-skills/devils-advocate"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/clearsmog/claude-skills/devils-advocate/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for devils-advocate

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/clearsmog/claude-skills/devils-advocate"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/clearsmog/claude-skills/devils-advocate.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 677 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 $0.00043 $0.00677
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00338
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00135
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00068

Measured 9d ago against content hash 1d7c9777bee2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

devils-advocate 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 9d 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.

devils-advocate/SKILL.md · 101 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 101 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Devil's Advocate Review

Critically examine a document or slide deck and challenge its design with 5-7 specific questions.

Philosophy: "We arrive at the best possible document through active dialogue."


Setup

  1. Read the target file (the document being challenged)
  2. Read the knowledge base in .claude/rules/ for notation conventions and narrative arc
  3. If applicable, read adjacent documents for continuity

Challenge Categories

For Slide Decks (.tex, .qmd, .typ slides)

Generate 5-7 challenges from these categories:

1. Ordering Challenges

"Could students understand this better if we showed X before Y?"

2. Prerequisite Challenges

"Do students have the background for this notation at this point?"

3. Gap Challenges

"Should we include an intuitive example before this formal proof?"

4. Alternative Presentation Challenges

"Here are 2 other ways to visualize/present this concept."

5. Notation Conflict Challenges

"This symbol conflicts with earlier lecture usage."

6. Cognitive Load Challenges

"This slide has too many new symbols. Can we split?"

7. Book Vision Challenges

"If this becomes a book chapter, does this section stand alone?"

For Non-Slide Documents (.typ guides, essays, CVs, reports)

Generate 5-7 challenges from these additional categories:

8. Structure Challenges (Guides)

"Is this section ordering optimal for the reader?"

9. ATS/Format Challenges (CVs)

"Is this ATS-compatible? Is the hierarchy clear?"

10. Narrative Challenges (Pitch Decks/Reports)

"Does the narrative build to a clear ask?"

11. Argument Challenges (Essays)

"Is the argument structure compelling? Are counterarguments addressed?"


Output Format

# Devil's Advocate: [Lecture Title]

## Challenges

### Challenge 1: [Category] — [Short title]
**Question:** [The specific pedagogical question]
**Why it matters:** [What could go wrong]
**Suggested resolution:** [Specific action]
**Slides affected:** [Numbers or titles]
**Severity:** [High / Medium / Low]

[Repeat for 5-7 challenges]

## Summary Verdict
**Strengths:** [2-3 things done well]
**Critical changes:** [0-2 changes before teaching]
**Suggested improvements:** [2-3 nice-to-have changes]

Read the full file on GitHub · 101 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. 9d ago First seen · 101 lines · 43 tokens per session scan A 1d7c9777bee2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

devils-advocate is a skill published in the GitHub repository clearsmog/claude-skills (2 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 677 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. 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.

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