brutal

name	brutal
description	Get brutally honest feedback on ideas, plans, code, or proposals from an external LLM. Triggers: "brutal feedback", "critique this", "tear this apart", "what's wrong with this idea", "red team this", or needs honest critical review of an idea or plan.

BRUTAL Feedback

Get brutally honest, structured critique of ideas, plans, code, or proposals by sending them to an external LLM (Grok via xAI by default) with adversarial personas and third-party framing.

Prerequisites

• uv installed (dependencies are auto-installed via PEP 723 inline metadata)
• For external model mode: XAI_API_KEY environment variable set (or appropriate key for chosen provider)
• For Claude CLI mode: claude CLI installed and authenticated

Critical Rule

ALL critique content MUST come from the external model via the script. If the script fails or returns no output, report the error to the user. NEVER generate critique content yourself — not as a fallback, not as a summary, not in any form.

Workflow

1. Collect the idea

If $ARGUMENTS contains the idea, use it directly.

If $ARGUMENTS is empty or only contains a persona/modifier, ask:

header: "Idea"
question: "Paste or describe the idea, plan, or proposal you want critiqued."

2. Determine mode

No question needed — detect from $ARGUMENTS before extracting the idea text. Only match these cues when they appear as standalone directives, not embedded inside the idea content:

• If user says "use claude", "claude cli", or passes a Claude model flag (e.g. --model sonnet-4-6) → Claude CLI mode. Use critique-claude.py.
• Otherwise → External model mode. Use critique.py.

Do NOT match partial words inside idea text (e.g. "my opus on distributed systems" is not a Claude model cue).

3. Select persona

ALWAYS ask for persona unless $ARGUMENTS contains an explicit persona cue from the table below. Do NOT infer persona from the skill name or tone of the idea.

header: "Persona"
question: "Pick the feedback style."
multiSelect: false
options:
  - label: "Devil's Advocate"
    value: "devil"
    description: "Basic counterarguments, challenges assumptions"
  - label: "Red Team"
    value: "red-team"
    description: "Adversarial weakness hunting, thorough and methodical"
  - label: "Gordon Ramsay"
    value: "ramsay"
    description: "Surgical, no mercy, tears apart what's lazy"

Pass the selected value (not the label) as the --persona argument: devil, red-team, or ramsay.

Explicit cue detection (only these exact phrases skip the question):

Persona	--persona value	Cues
Devil's Advocate	devil	"devil", "counterarguments"
Red Team	red-team	"red team", "attack"
Gordon Ramsay	ramsay	"ramsay", "tear apart"

4. Gather context (optional)

If the idea references code, files, or domain-specific context, read relevant files and pass as --context to give the external model grounding.

5. Run the critique

Write the idea to a temp file, then run the appropriate script based on mode from step 2.

External model mode:

uv run ~/.claude/skills/brutal/scripts/critique.py \
  --idea-file /tmp/brutal-idea.txt \
  --persona PERSONA \
  [--self-critique]

Claude CLI mode:

uv run ~/.claude/skills/brutal/scripts/critique-claude.py \
  --idea-file /tmp/brutal-idea.txt \
  --persona PERSONA \
  [--model MODEL] \
  [--self-critique]

Pass --model only if the user specified a particular Claude model (e.g. claude-sonnet-4-6). If they just said "use claude", omit --model to use the default.

For both modes: write large context to a file and pass --context-file /tmp/brutal-context.txt. For short ideas, --idea "TEXT" and --context "TEXT" also work. Add --self-critique when the modifier is active.

The script outputs formatted markdown directly. Do NOT reformat, summarize, or rephrase any of it.

6. Present the output

Print the script's stdout verbatim. Do NOT add any text before, after, or around it.

Alternative Providers

When the user specifies an exact model string (e.g. "use gpt-4o"), pass it as --model PROVIDER/MODEL verbatim. When the user gives only a provider name (e.g. "use openai"), use the default model from the table below. Add the required --with extra to the uv run command.

Provider	Default --model value	--with extra	Env var	Notes
xAI (default)	xai/grok-4.20-0309-reasoning	(built-in)	XAI_API_KEY
OpenAI	openai/gpt-5.4-2026-03-05	(built-in)	OPENAI_API_KEY
Anthropic	anthropic/claude-opus-4-6	instructor[anthropic]	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
Google	google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview	instructor[google-genai]	GOOGLE_API_KEY
Ollama	ollama/deepseek-reasoner	(built-in)	—	Defaults to http://localhost:11434/v1. Set BASE_URL in .env to override

Example with Anthropic:

uv run --with "instructor[anthropic]" ~/.claude/skills/brutal/scripts/critique.py \
  --model anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-20250514 \
  --idea-file /tmp/brutal-idea.txt \
  --persona PERSONA

Behavioural Modifiers

Behaviour	Cues	Default
Claude CLI mode	"use claude", "claude cli", or a Claude model flag (e.g. --model sonnet-4-6)	Off (uses external model)
External model override	"use openai", "use gemini", "use ollama", "use grok-3"	xai/grok-4.20-0309-reasoning
Self-critique	"self-critique", "double check", "critique yourself"	Off
Include code context	references files or code in the idea	Auto-detect

Keywords

brutal feedback, honest review, critique, red team, devil's advocate, tear apart, roast, what's wrong, poke holes, claude cli