constructive-dissent

constructive-dissent is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from NickCrew/Claude-Cortex. It costs 42 tokens per session (952 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured guide for challenging proposals, assumptions, and architectural decisions. It uses different levels of disagreement to find weaknesses and develop alternative approaches.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to stress-test plans, review architecture, audit assumptions, compare competing approaches, and explore alternatives before finalizing a decision.
Why use it?
It helps teams notice hidden risks and blind spots before committing to an important technical or strategic choice.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

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/nickcrew/claude-cortex/constructive-dissent
Any agent
npx skills add NickCrew/Claude-Cortex --skill constructive-dissent
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/NickCrew/Claude-Cortex

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 constructive-dissent

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nickcrew/claude-cortex/constructive-dissent.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nickcrew/claude-cortex/constructive-dissent)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nickcrew/claude-cortex/constructive-dissent"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nickcrew/claude-cortex/constructive-dissent.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 952 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 5.1 $0.00042 $0.00952
Opus 5 $0.00021 $0.00476
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00190
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00095

Measured 2d ago against content hash 864b2ed03401, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

constructive-dissent 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 2d 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/constructive-dissent/SKILL.md · 126 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 126 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Constructive Dissent

Systematically challenge proposals through structured dissent protocols that expose weaknesses, test assumptions, and generate superior alternatives.

When to Use This Skill

  • Before finalizing major decisions or architectural choices
  • Testing proposals for hidden weaknesses and blind spots
  • Generating alternative approaches not yet considered
  • Auditing assumptions (explicit, implicit, and structural)
  • Evaluating competing solutions with stakeholder perspectives
  • Avoid using for routine code reviews — use requesting-code-review instead

Workflow

Step 1: Select Dissent Intensity

Choose the appropriate challenge level based on decision stakes:

Level Purpose When to Use
Gentle Refine without challenging core approach Low-stakes improvements, early drafts
Systematic Challenge methods while respecting intent Medium-stakes decisions, methodology review
Rigorous Attack fundamental premises High-stakes architecture, major pivots
Paradigmatic Question worldview, propose radical alternatives Strategic direction, innovation pursuit

Step 2: Run Assumption Audit

For the proposal under review, systematically identify:

  1. Explicit assumptions — What's stated as given?
  2. Implicit assumptions — What's unstated but operating?
  3. Structural assumptions — What framework biases exist?
  4. Temporal assumptions — What time constraints are artificial?
| Assumption | Type | Validity | Risk if Wrong |
|------------|------|----------|---------------|
| Users prefer speed over accuracy | Implicit | Medium | Product misalignment |
| API rate limits won't change | Temporal | Low | System failure at scale |

Step 3: Generate Edge Cases

Stress-test the proposal across dimensions:

  • Scale extremes: What happens at 10x and 0.1x volume?
  • Performance limits: Where does the approach break?
  • User behavior extremes: Best-case and worst-case usage patterns
  • Resource constraints: What if budget, time, or team shrinks by half?

Read the full file on GitHub · 126 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. 2d ago First seen · 126 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A 864b2ed03401

Subscribe to this mod's changes

constructive-dissent is a skill published in the GitHub repository NickCrew/Claude-Cortex (37 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 952 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 2026-09-03.

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