# roast-me
A Claude Code skill that interrogates a raw idea instead of encouraging it.
The premise: every question the roast asks is one you will get asked later by someone
whose money or time is on the line. Better to hear it here.
## What it does
You drop an idea. The skill runs it through three adversarial rounds, each with a
different persona, then writes a verdict and, if anything survived, a pitch or an
implementation plan.
- **Phase 0, capture.** Forces the idea into one sentence: *for [who], [what], instead of
[current alternative]*. Creates `ideas/<slug>/idea.md` with the one-liner, your raw
description verbatim, and the date.
- **Phase 1, recon.** Quietly finds who already does this and whether there's evidence the
problem is real, then folds the strongest competitor into the first round of questions.
- **Phase 2, three rounds.** Round 1 is the target user who doesn't care and already gets
by. Round 2 is a numerate investor who has seen this before. Round 3 is the engineer who
has to ship it and the operator who has to run it. Max four questions per round.
- **Phase 3, verdict.** Writes `ideas/<slug>/roast.md`: kill shots, what survived,
everything you hand-waved, the single riskiest assumption plus the cheapest test for it,
and a plain `BUILD` / `RESHAPE` / `PARK`.
- **Phase 4, deliverable.** A one-page pitch, a risk-ordered implementation plan, or both,
built only from what survived.
Ground rules the skill holds itself to: no flattery, no compliment sandwiches, attacks on
the idea and never the person, every attack specific and falsifiable, vague answers marked
`UNANSWERED` rather than quietly filled in with optimism.
## Usage
From this directory, in Claude Code:
```
/roast-me
```
Or just say "roast this idea", "poke holes in this", or "would you invest in this" and
describe the idea. The skill triggers on its own.
Answer the questions honestly. A roast you win by being vague produces a pitch that fails
on contact with a real audience, which defeats the point.
## Layout
```
.claude/skills/roast-me/
SKILL.md the roast itself: rules, personas, phases
references/
attack-lines.md question bank + named failure modes
pitch-template.md one-page pitch structure
plan-template.md risk-ordered plan structure
ideas/
<slug>/
idea.md one-liner + raw description + date
roast.md kill shots, survivors, verdict
pitch.md optional deliverable
plan.md optional deliverable
```
`references/attack-lines.md` carries the named failure modes the roast checks against:
*vitamin not painkiller*, *feature not a company*, *founder is the only user*,
*distribution unsolved*, *economics inverted*, and a dozen more. It's a bank to draw from,
not a checklist to run.