This skill cannot add capability (map: references/family-map.md — the discipline judgment roles across the family load). It turns every available thinking dial to maximum and enforces a protocol that recovers a large part of the mid-tier gap on decomposable judgment tasks; it does not close the gap on pure-insight tasks.
Two ways in: other agents load it as a discipline when they hold a judgment role (skeptic, spec-architect, completeness checker, reconciler), and it is invocable directly with a hard question or decision as the argument. Either way: Part 1 first, then Part 2, always both. Escalate to Part 3 only on its triggers.
Part 1 — Thinking dials (mechanical, always first)
| Platform | Dial |
|---|---|
| Claude Code, main loop | Include the word "ultrathink" in the working prompt |
| Claude Code, subagents | Pass the highest available effort (and the tier-appropriate model) on the Agent / Workflow agent() call |
| Claude API | Extended thinking with a large token budget |
| Codex / GPT CLIs | Highest reasoning-effort flag |
| No dials available | Part 2 + Part 3 carry the load alone |
When a dial exists, turn it AND run the discipline — never one without the other. A maxed dial without the protocol reproduces the same failure modes at higher cost; the protocol without the dial leaves free depth unused.
Part 2 — The discipline
Single-agent protocol. Six steps, in order, none skipped. Write each step's output down — in the response or the scratch file below — before starting the next; reasoning that happens only "in your head" is the reasoning that silently collapses back to the first idea.
- Frame. Restate the question in your own words: the actual decision to be made, the success criteria, and what evidence would settle it. If you cannot say what would settle it, you are not ready to answer it.
- Diverge. Write ≥3 genuinely different hypotheses or options — including one contrarian ("the obvious answer is wrong because…") — BEFORE evaluating any of them. Options that are the same answer in different phrasing count as one.
- Evidence. Per hypothesis, gather concrete evidence: quotes, file:line, docs, measurements. Label every item fact or assumption. Verify assumptions where possible; tag the rest explicitly
unverified— an unverified assumption never silently becomes a fact in step 5. - Attack. Write the strongest possible refutation of the current leader — steelman the opposition, never strawman it. If the attack lands, return to step 2 carrying what it taught you.
- Reconcile. Verdict + confidence (
high | medium | low) + the falsifier: the observation that would change your mind. - Compress. State the answer in ≤3 sentences before any supporting detail.
Externalized memory. On long tasks, write intermediate state — the frame, the option list, the evidence table, attack results — to a scratch file and re-read it before the verdict. The file is the thread a mid-tier model would otherwise lose: it survives context pressure, and re-reading it forces the verdict to answer the question actually asked, not the one remembered.
Failure modes this protocol corrects, and where:
| Failure mode | Corrected by |
|---|---|
| First-idea anchoring | Step 2 — diverge before evaluating anything |
| Assumption/fact conflation | Step 3 — every item labeled; assumptions verified or tagged |
| Missing self-attack | Step 4 — refutation is mandatory, not optional |
| Context drift | Externalized memory — re-read the scratch file before the verdict |
| Buried verdicts | Step 6 — answer first, detail after |
Part 3 — The panel
Orchestrated protocol for the hardest calls only. Triggers — any one suffices:
- the decision is expensive to reverse
- two prior attempts (agents, rounds, or your own passes) disagreed
- the orchestrator's own confidence after Part 2 is low
Protocol:
- Spawn 2–3 independent reasoners at max dials (Part 1), same question, each with a different assigned stance — defend-A / defend-B / find-the-third-option, or builder / breaker / economist. Each runs the full Part 2 discipline and reports verdict, confidence, evidence, falsifier.
- One reconciler — max dials, running Part 2 itself — then: lists what the reasoners agree on as settled; adjudicates every disagreement by evidence quality, never eloquence (a quoted measurement beats a confident paragraph); produces the final answer plus a dissent note recording the strongest losing argument and what would revive it.
Cost: 3–4 agents. The assigned stances are the point — independent reasoners without stances converge on the same first idea, and the panel buys nothing.
When NOT to use
- Mechanical or checklist work — the charter checklists ARE the discipline there; layering this one on top slows them down for no recall.
- Simple lookups. Read the file, read the doc.
- Anything a test can settle. Evidence you can execute beats reasoning about evidence — write the test, run it, done.
Family integration
Judgment roles across the nuke family — skeptics, the spec-architect, verify's completeness checker, nuke-spec's designer, nuke-debug's adjudicator, panel reconcilers — load nuke-think when it is installed. Worker-tier charter auditors do not: their checklist is their discipline, and this protocol would multiply their cost without adding recall.