| name | validate-answer |
| description | Trust-check an answer, plan, or decision you already have — multiple identical independent reads converge per question, agreement signals confidence and splits flag what's contested, then walk each decision. TRIGGER when: user says 'validate', 'trust-check', 'is this right', 'pressure-test my decision'; user has a near-final answer or a few focused decisions to confirm. SKIP when: no answer yet, want one built (best-answer); surfacing what's missing (find-gaps). |
Validate Answer
Trust-check an answer or a few focused decisions.
When to use
You have an answer, plan, or decision and want to know if you can trust it.
- Multiple identical independent reads: agreement = confidence, disagreement = contested. The reviewers are deliberately the same — diversity here would destroy the signal.
- NOT this if you have no answer yet and want one built →
best-answer.
- NOT this if you want to surface what you missed →
find-gaps.
- NOT this if you're grading one concrete proposal →
second-opinion.
Steps
Step 1 — Dispatch
- Reviewers: R0 (you, concurrent) + R1, R2 (two
general-purpose subagents in parallel).
- Prompt (identical for all three): artifact path(s), the questions, a confidence (0.00–1.00) and impact score per recommendation.
- Preflight: if any question is vague, sharpen via
AskUserQuestion first.
- Output schema per question: recommendation, confidence (0.00–1.00), impact — render
Label (value): Minimal (0.25) · Low (0.5) · Medium (1) · High (2) · Massive (3) — 1-2 sentence reason.
- Unprompted observations (any reviewer): 1-sentence claim, raising reviewer(s), confidence 0.00–1.00, impact; merge duplicates.
Step 2 — Classify, synthesize, and confirm
- Classify each question by its three reviewer scores — here unanimous agreement is the trust signal:
- agreed — all three ≥ 0.75. Unanimous across identical reviewers; the answer holds.
- contested — ≥1 reviewer ≥ 0.75 OR ≥2 reviewers ≥ 0.70. Real support, not consensus — walk it, flagged as contested.
- drop — ≤1 reviewer ≥ 0.70 and none ≥ 0.75. Too thin to walk.
- Order: sort the walk set by max score descending.
- Dependency override: if a decision can invalidate later questions, walk it first.
- Table:
| # | Question | R0 | R1 | R2 | Impact | Band |
Band = agreed or contested.
- Checkpoint: use
AskUserQuestion to confirm the walk order before walking.
Step 3 — Walk questions one at a time
Queue rule: drop later questions invalidated by an approved decision, with a one-line reason.
For each question:
- Present: restate the question, quote the artifact span if location-specific, show R0/R1/R2 side-by-side, and say whether it came in
agreed or contested.
- Decide:
AskUserQuestion with options: apply / alternative / defer. Apply if actionable; otherwise record.
- On pushback: invoke the
second-opinion skill via the Skill tool on the challenged pick.
Step 4 — Walk unprompted observations
List all observations; walk those at confidence ≥ 0.80 (Step 3's sub-procedure, skip R0/R1/R2 split) — a solo observation is uncorroborated, so it clears a higher bar than a voted question.
Step 5 — Summary
One line each:
- Decisions applied — question # + pick.
- Decisions deferred — reason.
- Questions skipped (upstream invalidation) — reason.
- Questions dropped (Step 2 drop band) — question + score.
- Unprompted observations — applied / deferred / dropped.
