brutal-honesty-review

brutal-honesty-review is a skill for Claude Code from summarybotng/summarybot-ng. It costs 72 tokens per session (1,822 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured review method for giving direct technical criticism of code, tests, and engineering decisions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review code or tests, challenge technical decisions, and turn findings into specific fixes.
Why use it?
It helps expose incorrect assumptions, weak quality standards, and unsupported claims before they cause larger problems.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/.

Good fit Use it to review code or tests, challenge technical decisions, and turn findings into specific fixes.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/summarybotng/summarybot-ng/brutal-honesty-review
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 summarybotng/summarybot-ng --skill brutal-honesty-review
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/summarybotng/summarybot-ng

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 brutal-honesty-review

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/summarybotng/summarybot-ng/brutal-honesty-review/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/summarybotng/summarybot-ng/brutal-honesty-review)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/summarybotng/summarybot-ng/brutal-honesty-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/summarybotng/summarybot-ng/brutal-honesty-review/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 brutal-honesty-review

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/summarybotng/summarybot-ng/brutal-honesty-review"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/summarybotng/summarybot-ng/brutal-honesty-review.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 72 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,822 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 $0.00072 $0.01822
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00911
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00364
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00182

Measured 7d ago against content hash 4ee1b2274d63, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

brutal-honesty-review 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 7d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (scripts/assess-code.sh, scripts/assess-tests.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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/brutal-honesty-review/SKILL.md · 244 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 244 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Brutal Honesty Review

<default_to_action> When brutal honesty is needed:

  1. CHOOSE MODE: Linus (technical), Ramsay (standards), Bach (BS detection)
  2. VERIFY CONTEXT: Senior engineer? Repeated mistake? Critical bug? Explicit request?
  3. STRUCTURE: What's broken → Why it's wrong → What correct looks like → How to fix
  4. ATTACK THE WORK, not the worker
  5. ALWAYS provide actionable path forward

Quick Mode Selection:

  • Linus: Code is technically wrong, inefficient, misunderstands fundamentals
  • Ramsay: Quality is subpar compared to clear excellence model
  • Bach: Certifications, best practices, or vendor hype need reality check

Calibration:

  • Level 1 (Direct): "This approach is fundamentally flawed because..."
  • Level 2 (Harsh): "We've discussed this three times. Why is it back?"
  • Level 3 (Brutal): "This is negligent. You're exposing user data because..."

DO NOT USE FOR: Junior devs' first PRs, demoralized teams, public forums, low psychological safety

Minimum Findings Enforcement

All brutal honesty reviews enforce a minimum of 3 weighted findings (CRITICAL=3, HIGH=2, MEDIUM=1, LOW=0.5). If the initial review finds fewer, escalate to deeper analysis. Brutally honest reviewers should ALWAYS find something -- if you can't, explain exactly why with evidence. </default_to_action>

Quick Reference Card

When to Use

Context Appropriate? Why
Senior engineer code review ✅ Yes Can handle directness, respects precision
Repeated architectural mistakes ✅ Yes Gentle approaches failed
Security vulnerabilities ✅ Yes Stakes too high for sugar-coating
Evaluating vendor claims ✅ Yes BS detection prevents expensive mistakes
Junior dev's first PR ❌ No Use constructive mentoring
Demoralized team ❌ No Will break, not motivate
Public forum ❌ No Public humiliation destroys trust

Three Modes

Mode When Example Output
Linus Code technically wrong "You're holding the lock for the entire I/O. Did you test under load?"
Ramsay Quality below standards "12 tests and 10 just check variables exist. Where's the business logic?"
Bach BS detection needed "This cert tests memorization, not bug-finding. Who actually benefits?"

Read the full file on GitHub · 244 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 7d ago First seen · 244 lines · 72 tokens per session scan A 4ee1b2274d63

Subscribe to this mod's changes

brutal-honesty-review is a skill published in the GitHub repository summarybotng/summarybot-ng (2 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 72 tokens to every session and 1,822 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 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

brutal-honesty-review

Unvarnished technical criticism combining Linus Torvalds' precision, Gordon Ramsay's standards, and James Bach's BS-detection. Use when code/tests need harsh reality checks, certification schemes smell fishy, or technical decisions lack rigor. No sugar-coating, just surgical truth about what's broken and why.

tourze/ai-infra · 72 tokens

code-quality

Análise proativa e sob demanda de qualidade de código. Detecta código morto, duplicações, oportunidades de consolidação, complexidade excessiva e code smells. Sugere melhorias e executa correções com aprovação. Triggers on: código morto, dead code, duplicação, duplicated, cleanup, refactor, complexidade, smell…

parisgroup-ai/imersao-ia-setup · 82 tokens

code-quality-engineer

Consolidated code quality skill combining debugging, code review, and QA testing. Provides systematic root-cause analysis, architecture conformance checks, test strategy, and bug reporting. Ensures every feature meets quality bar. Combines: debugger + code-reviewer + qa-engineer.

buiphucminhtam/forgewright · 61 tokens

adversarial-reviewer

Adversarial code review that assumes bugs exist and hunts for them. Use when asked to review code, find bugs, audit for correctness, stress-test a PR, or when someone says "tear this apart" or "what's wrong with this". Give no benefit of the doubt — every line is guilty until proven innocent.

emdash-cms/emdash · 71 tokens

gsd-ns-review

Route to the appropriate quality / review skill based on the user's intent. gsd-code-review-fix was absorbed by gsd-code-review --fix in #2790.

open-gsd/gsd-core · 16 tokens

issue

Use when starting a chain from a GitHub issue — turning an issue URL or number into a triaged, planned, dispatched, and reviewed pull request. Classifies the thread (bug → root-cause discipline, feature → plan chain, question → drafted reply), synthesizes a spec from the issue's own acceptance criteria, then runs the…

jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace · 115 tokens