vdd-adversarial

name	vdd-adversarial
description	Use when performing Verification-Driven Development with adversarial approach. Actively challenge assumptions and find weak spots.
tier	2
version	1.5

VDD Adversarial

1. Red Flags (Anti-Rationalization)

STOP and READ THIS if you are thinking:

• "The code passes tests, so it's fine" -> WRONG. Tests only cover what the author imagined. You MUST find what they missed.
• "This edge case is unlikely" -> WRONG. Unlikely ≠ impossible. If it crashes, it WILL crash in production.
• "The happy path works, that's enough" -> WRONG. Adversarial review exists to destroy happy-path assumptions.
• "I'll skip the template, it's just a quick review" -> WRONG. Every critique MUST use assets/template_critique.md.

2. VDD Methodology Context

This skill implements the Iterative Adversarial Refinement phase ("The Roast") from the VDD methodology.

Your Role: You are the Adversary. The Builder has already passed the Verification Loop (tests + HITL). Your job is to find what survived that phase.

Key Principles (see references/vdd-methodology.md for full methodology):

• Anti-Slop Bias: The first "correct" version is the most dangerous — hidden technical debt lurks beneath.
• Exhaustive Reporting (supersedes "Forced Negativity"): report every issue, including low-confidence ones, with confidence + severity attached — filtering happens downstream, never in the reviewer's head. Zero tolerance for "lazy" AI patterns (placeholder comments, generic error handling, inefficient loops).
• Context Resetting: Each adversarial review MUST use a fresh context window. Why (documented mechanisms, audit-067 C-02): multi-turn assumption lock-in — models lock onto early assumptions and degrade ~39% vs single-turn on the same tasks (arXiv:2505.06120); context rot — accumulated history dilutes attention as context grows (Chroma 2025); pushback-driven sycophantic belief updates within a session (TRUTH DECAY / SYCON-Bench). A fresh window restores single-turn rigor.
• Linear Accountability: Every line of code MUST trace to a corresponding issue and verification step.

Empirical positioning (ab-experiment-075, pre-registered rule 3): this skill is a precision tool, not a recall lever. Against a plain exhaustive baseline ("report everything with confidence + severity") the adversarial scaffolding scored −6.9pp recall but −16% false positives and a 3.9% vs 13.0% bikeshedding ratio (N=3, 24 sealed seeded bugs — docs/reviews/ab-experiment-075.md). Load it when noise/FP cost dominates (triage queues, high-volume review); for recall-critical passes prefer the plain exhaustive prompt, or /vdd-multi when class-complete coverage justifies 3× cost.

Convergence Signal (Exit Strategy) — Objective Convergence

The review cycle STOPS only when an objective bar is met: (1) the full test run has actually been executed (by you, or — in critic/subagent mode — via execution evidence supplied by the orchestrator; if neither exists, or the supplied line reads NOT RUN, the condition is unverifiable: report the finding 'exit-bar condition unverifiable — NOT RUN ()', never approve. NOT RUN is the honest thing to write instead of fabricating; it is not a substitute for the run, and treating it as one makes running nothing the cheapest way to converge), (2) zero CRITICAL findings, (3) zero legitimate findings in logic / security / slop, and (4) only bikeshedding/style remains. That — not "I was forced to invent a flaw" — is the signal of "Maximum Viable Refinement" (Zero-Slop). Approval is bound to the objective bar; fabricating a nitpick is never the trigger to approve. Until the bar is met, keep rejecting.

3. Challenge Assumptions

• Question Everything: Do NOT accept the "happy path" as truth.
• Input Validation: What if input is null? Too long? Invalid chars?
• State: What if the DB is down? API is slow? Disk full?

4. Decision Tree

1. Is it clear? -> If not, REJECT.
2. Is it safe? -> If not, REJECT.
3. Does it break anything? -> Check regression.
4. Is it tested? -> If not, REJECT.

5. Failure Simulation

• Simulate Failures: Mentally (or physically) simulate network failures, timeouts, permission errors.
• Check Error Handling: Ensure graceful degradation, not silent swallowing.

6. Output Artifacts

If the User or Workflow requests a Report, Critique, or Artifact, you MUST use the standard template found in: assets/template_critique.md

Read this file using view_file before generating the report.

7. Rationalization Table

Agent Excuse	Reality / Counter-Argument
"The code passes existing tests"	Tests only cover known scenarios. Adversarial review targets unknown unknowns.
"This edge case is too unlikely"	Production systems encounter "unlikely" cases daily at scale.
"I don't want to be too harsh"	Harshness is not the requirement — exhaustive reporting is. Report every issue, including low-confidence ones, with confidence + severity; filtering happens downstream. Withholding a finding to be nice is the only real failure.

8. Examples

[!TIP] See examples/usage_example.md for a complete adversarial critique walkthrough.