challenge

challenge is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from me2resh/apexyard. It costs 44 tokens per session (1,133 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured devil's-advocate review of an idea, feature, decision, or plan. It examines the assumptions behind the proposal and points out risks, failure cases, and alternatives.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before writing a specification, starting a large task, or making a major technical decision, such as adding another database.
Why use it?
It helps expose a weak premise or an overlooked cheaper option before you spend time building the wrong thing.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/me2resh/apexyard/challenge
Any agent
npx skills add me2resh/apexyard --skill challenge
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/me2resh/apexyard

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 challenge

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/me2resh/apexyard/challenge.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/me2resh/apexyard/challenge)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/me2resh/apexyard/challenge"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/me2resh/apexyard/challenge.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 44 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,133 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00044 $0.01133
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00566
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00227
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00113

Measured 5d ago against content hash de8d2d5a58f4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

challenge 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 5d 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.

.claude/skills/challenge/SKILL.md · 79 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 79 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/challenge — Stress-test the premise with The Contrarian

/challenge <target> spawns the Contrarian agent (Naqid) to adversarially challenge an idea before you commit build effort to it. It is the premise-level analog of /code-review (Rex), /security-review (Hakim), and /design-review (Tariq) — but where those review built artifacts and gate a merge, the Contrarian challenges whether the idea is right at all and is advisory-only: it never writes a marker, never blocks a gate. The call stays yours.

This is the operational tool for the "play devil's advocate" reflex — made a first-class, repeatable move instead of an ad-hoc prompt.

When to use it

  • Before writing a spec or filing an epic — pressure-test the idea while it's cheap to change.
  • Before a big technical decision (/decide) — surface the assumptions and the cheaper alternative.
  • Before committing to a multi-step plan — find the load-bearing assumption that, if wrong, sinks the plan.
  • Any time you catch yourself agreeing with an idea too easily — that's exactly when an adversary earns its keep.

Usage

/challenge add a second database to handle reporting load
/challenge #345
/challenge projects/apexbrain/prd.md
/challenge the plan

The argument is free-form. Step 1 normalises it into a concrete target for the agent.

Process

1. Resolve the target

Classify the argument:

Argument shape Target the agent receives
#N or owner/repo#N The ticket — instruct the agent to gh issue view <N> and challenge it.
A path ending .md (or under projects/, docs/, prds/, designs/) that exists The document — the agent reads it and challenges it.
the plan / this plan The most recent multi-step plan presented in the conversation — pass it inline to the agent.
Anything else (free text) An idea stated in the conversation — pass the idea text (plus relevant conversation context) inline to the agent.

Read the full file on GitHub · 79 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. 5d ago First seen · 79 lines · 44 tokens per session scan A de8d2d5a58f4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

challenge is a skill published in the GitHub repository me2resh/apexyard (498 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 44 tokens to every session and 1,133 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 2026-08-30.

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