doubt-driven-development
Subjects every non-trivial decision to a fresh-context adversarial review before it stands. Use when correctness matters more than speed, when working in unfamiliar code, when stakes are high (production, security-sensitive logic, irreversible operations), or any time a confident output would be cheaper to verify now than to debug later.
npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills --skill doubt-driven-development --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Doubt-Driven Development ## Overview A confident answer is not a correct one. Long sessions accumulate context that quietly turns assumptions into "facts" without anyone noticing. Doubt-driven development is the discipline of materializing a fresh-context reviewer — biased to **disprove**, not approve — before any non-trivial output stands. This is not `/review`. `/review` is a verdict on a finished artifact. This is an in-flight posture: non-trivial decisions get cross-examined while course-correction is still cheap. ## When to Use A decision is **non-trivial** when at least one of these is true: - It introduces or modifies branching logic - It crosses a module or service boundary - It asserts a property the type system or compiler cannot verify (thread safety, idempotence, ordering, invariants) - Its correctness depends on context the future reader cannot see - Its blast radius is irreversible (production deploy, data migration, public API change) Apply the skill when: - About to make an architectural decision under uncertainty - About to commit non-trivial code - About to claim a non-obvious fact ("this is safe", "this scales", "this matches the spec") - Working in code you do
- Overview
- When to Use
- Loading Constraints
- The Process
- Step 1: CLAIM — Surface what stands
- Step 2: EXTRACT — Smallest reviewable unit
- Step 3: DOUBT — Invoke the fresh-context reviewer
- Step 4: RECONCILE — Fold findings back
- Step 5: STOP — Bounded loop, not recursion
- Common Rationalizations
- Red Flags
- Interaction with Other Skills
- Verification
Write the adversarial prompt + ARTIFACT + CONTRACT to a temp file first.
Then pipe via stdin so shell metacharacters in the artifact stay inert.
Codex (read-only sandbox keeps the CLI from writing to your workspace):
codex exec --sandbox read-only -C <repo-path> - < /tmp/doubt-prompt.md
Gemini ('--approval-mode plan' is read-only; '-p ""' triggers non-interactive
mode and the prompt is read from stdin):
gemini --approval-mode plan -p "" < /tmp/doubt-prompt.mdWhat does the doubt-driven-development skill do?
Subjects every non-trivial decision to a fresh-context adversarial review before it stands. Use when correctness matters more than speed, when working in unfamiliar code, when stakes are high (production, security-sensitive logic, irreversible operations), or any time a confident output would be cheaper to verify now than to debug later.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add addyosmani/agent-skills --skill doubt-driven-development --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From addyosmani/agent-skills, a repository with 81,574 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.