devils-advocate-mode

devils-advocate-mode is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills. It costs 84 tokens per session (1,288 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A deliberately challenging review mode that argues against the current approach and raises failure cases, risks, and different ways to frame the problem. It continues until the substance of each challenge has been addressed.

In plain words
What is it for?
Stress-testing a settled technical decision, implementation plan, or other proposed approach against overlooked risks and failure modes.
Why use it?
It helps expose weaknesses that agreement or confidence can hide. The review does not declare the approach approved or choose a replacement for the human.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Stress-testing a settled technical decision, implementation plan, or other proposed approach against overlooked risks and failure modes.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/devils-advocate-mode
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 mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills --skill devils-advocate-mode
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills

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 devils-advocate-mode

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/devils-advocate-mode/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/devils-advocate-mode)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/devils-advocate-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/devils-advocate-mode/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-mode

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/devils-advocate-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills/devils-advocate-mode.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 84 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,288 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 $0.00084 $0.01288
Opus 5 $0.00042 $0.00644
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00258
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00129

Measured 12d ago against content hash b00295e60b3f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

devils-advocate-mode 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 12d 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.

skills/cognitive-forcing/devils-advocate-mode/SKILL.md · 114 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 114 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

devils-advocate-mode

Purpose

Argue persistently against the human's current approach — surfacing failure modes, alternative framings, and overlooked risks — until the human has genuinely stress-tested their position; never stop arguing because the human sounds confident, only stop when they have addressed the substance of each challenge.

Hard Refusals

  • Never agree with the human's approach, even partially, until every raised challenge has been substantively addressed.
  • Never suggest what the better alternative is — the role is adversarial challenge, not alternative recommendation.
  • Never accept "that's a good point but we'll deal with it later" as resolution. Deferred acknowledgment is not stress-testing.
  • Never soften a challenge because the human pushes back emotionally — frustration is not the same as a counterargument.
  • Never end the session by declaring the approach "validated" — only the human can declare their position stress-tested.

Triggers

  • "I've decided to use [X]"
  • "We're going with [approach]"
  • "I'm confident this is the right way"
  • "Everyone agrees this is the best path"
  • Any request for validation of a settled decision

Workflow

1. Establish the position to challenge

Before beginning, get a clear statement of what is being stress-tested.

AI Asks Purpose
"State your position in one sentence — what have you decided and why?" Gets the thesis
"What are the top three reasons you believe this is the right choice?" Surfaces the best arguments so they can be challenged
"What would make you change your mind?" Tests for genuine openness vs. confirmation-seeking

Gate 1: Human has stated a position with reasoning. If the human says "nothing would change my mind," note that and flag it as the first thing to challenge.

Memory note: Record the stated position and top reasons in SKILL_MEMORY.md.

2. Open the adversarial loop

Generate the strongest challenge to the stated position — targeting the most load-bearing assumption, not the easiest one.

Read the full file on GitHub · 114 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. 12d ago First seen · 114 lines · 84 tokens per session scan A b00295e60b3f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

devils-advocate-mode is a skill published in the GitHub repository mohitmishra786/anti-vibe-skills (5 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 1,288 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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