| name | ceo-review |
| description | Dialectical premise-and-alternatives audit for a plan, spec, or context packet.
Four moves: premise challenge (is this the right problem?), mandatory
structurally-distinct alternatives, cross-model outside voice, user-ratified
convergence. Named for Gary Tan's plan-ceo-review pattern; operationalizes
the AGENTS.md "Diverge Before You Converge" doctrine at the plan-review
stage.
Use when: about to commit to a plan/spec/design, reviewing a ticket before
shape, when "is this the right problem" would be useful, or any time a
proposal smells like a symptom fix instead of a root-cause fix.
Trigger: /ceo-review, /challenge, /premise-check.
|
| argument-hint | [plan|spec|context-packet|ticket] |
/ceo-review
Dialectical audit. Subject the plan to premise-challenge, mandatory
alternatives, and a cross-model outside voice before committing.
When to run
- Before committing to a context packet or spec
- When a backlog ticket's framing smells like a symptom, not a root cause
- After
/shape produces a design and before /deliver starts building
- Any time someone asks "is this the right thing to build?"
Skip trivial plans. CEO-review catches expensive misdirection, not typos.
The Four Moves
1. Premise Challenge
Before touching the stated solution:
- Five-whys the goal. If the plan says "build X," keep asking why until
you've named the underlying user outcome.
- Proxy check. Is the stated solution the most direct path to the
outcome, or something easier to scope?
- "Do nothing" test. What happens if this never ships? If the answer is
"it's fine," the plan has a priority problem, not an execution problem.
- Provenance. Who asked for this, what did they actually say? Tickets
drift from original intent through paraphrase.
If the premise is wrong, stop. Reframe and re-shape — do not review forward.
2. Mandatory Alternatives
Produce ≥2 structurally distinct approaches. Not one idea in costumes.
- Minimal viable: smallest thing that tests the outcome
- Ideal architecture: what you'd build if effort were free
- Assumption-inverter: pick one load-bearing assumption and flip it
(sync → async, per-user → per-team, pull → push, etc.)
For each: one-paragraph sketch, its load-bearing assumption, and one way it
would fail differently from the others. If all three fail the same way,
they're the same plan.
3. Outside Voice
Consult a different foundation, not a different persona.
- Prefer:
codex exec "...", gemini "...", thinktank ..., or /research
- Acceptable fallback: a fresh-context Claude subagent with an adversarial prompt
- Feed it: the premise, the plan, and the alternatives
- Ask: "Which framing is load-bearing wrong? Which alternative would you
pick and why? What are we missing?"
The outside voice is informational, not authoritative. It informs your
judgment; it does not replace it.
4. Ratify
Present to the user:
## CEO Review: <title>
### Premise Verdict
[stands / reframed — if reframed, state the new premise]
### Alternatives
1. <minimal> — load-bearing assumption: ... — fails by: ...
2. <ideal> — load-bearing assumption: ... — fails by: ...
3. <inverted> — load-bearing assumption: ... — fails by: ...
### Outside Voice (<source>)
<what they saw that we didn't>
### Recommendation
<one concrete next step — argue for it>
User decides: proceed with recommendation, pick a different alternative,
reframe the premise, or abandon. Silence is not consent.
Gotchas
- Premise-challenge theater. Asking "is this the right problem?" and
immediately answering "yes" is not a challenge. If the premise stands,
state what specifically survived the audit — otherwise you didn't do it.
- Same-foundation alternatives. Three Claude-generated alternatives from
one prompt are not three alternatives. The outside voice must have a
different model underneath; persona diversity is theater.
- Authoritative outside voice. "Codex said X, so X." No. Cross-model
consensus is signal; disagreement is signal. Your judgment arbitrates.
- Skipping on "small" plans. The most expensive failures seemed small
enough to skip review. If effort-to-ship > ~one agent-day, review.
- Ratification by absence. Presenting the review and moving on without
an explicit "proceed" is silent absorption, not ratification.
Relationship to other skills
/shape runs the philosophy bench (ousterhout/carmack/grug) at Phase 3
for M+ effort designs — that's persona diversity. /ceo-review adds the
foundation diversity (outside voice) and premise challenge. Use both./office-hours is the pre-shape dialectic: raw idea → sharpened
problem statement. /ceo-review is the post-shape dialectic: shaped plan
→ ratified plan./groom surfaces themes; its synthesis protocol includes a premise
challenge. If /groom already reframed, /ceo-review picks up from there.- gstack reference:
gstack-plan-ceo-review preserves Gary Tan's
original for comparison. This skill is the spellbook-native version,
self-contained and integrated with our workflow.
