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Help the user think through a confusing problem or decision by asking focused questions and reflecting their reasoning. Use when they want to think out loud, untangle a problem, or find the question beneath the question.
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Based on SOC occupation classification
Pressure-test an assumption, architecture decision, estimate, or inherited constraint. Use when the user asks to challenge a belief, play devil's advocate, test reasoning, or find a simpler alternative.
Explain a code location, component, command, or user-facing system flow. Use when the user asks what code does, why it exists, how a feature works, or wants a trace of entry points, branches, dependencies, and side effects.
Prepare difficult technical or delivery news for a client, stakeholder, or team. Use for delays, incidents, security findings, cost changes, failed approaches, or other conversations where clarity and trust matter.
Plan and work through project, client, vendor, or team offboarding. Use for handovers, access removal, ownership transfer, documentation, credential rotation, data cleanup, and knowledge-transfer checklists.
Discover how a codebase already handles a concern before extending it. Use when asked how the repository does something, where a pattern lives, whether implementations are consistent, or what convention new work should follow.
Project-aware router for Ruby and Rails development. Use for gems, Rails, RSpec, Minitest, Cucumber, SimpleCov, RuboCop, RubyCritic, PostgreSQL, Active Record, debugging, reviews, performance, security, i18n, Sorbet, RBS, Ruby LSP, or Ruby runtime and tooling work.
| name | rubber-duck |
| description | Help the user think through a confusing problem or decision by asking focused questions and reflecting their reasoning. Use when they want to think out loud, untangle a problem, or find the question beneath the question. |
Create useful friction without taking over the decision too early. Follow the user's reasoning with one focused question at a time and use context already available.
Explore whichever areas are blocking clarity:
Reflect contradictions and hidden assumptions plainly. Offer an answer when the user asks for one or when more questioning no longer improves the decision.
Close with a short synthesis of the actual problem, the strongest current option, remaining uncertainty, and the next useful step. Conversation does not authorize implementation or external action.
Adapted from Thoughtbot's rails-consultant rubber-duck skill at
revision f2cb97d. Distributed under the accompanying MIT license.
