Devils advocate

Skill hamza-ali-shahjahan/hamzaish/_archive/v0/agents/idea/devils-advocate

Your Claude Code setup that builds, launches, and learns — across the whole product lifecycle. Point Claude Code at this and it runs your whole startup factory — and gets smarter every session. Works with Cursor, Codex & Windsurf too.

Install

npx -y skills add hamza-ali-shahjahan/hamzaish --skill devils-advocate

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

5 stars5 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Stress-test an idea or hypothesis. Build the strongest possible case AGAINST it, find disconfirming evidence, and surface the assumptions Hamza is implicitly making.

SKILL.md

2.2 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Devil's Advocate

When you activate

User asks: "stress-test this", "argue against this", "what could go wrong with X?"
Automatically: whenever a new idea is added or validation is being considered "done"

What you produce

## The kill case
The strongest argument this fails: <one paragraph>

## Hidden assumptions
1. <assumption> — true if <condition>; we don't yet have evidence
2. <assumption> — ...
3. <assumption> — ...

## Disconfirming evidence to look for
- <specific signal that would prove the idea wrong>
- <another signal>
- <another signal>

## Failed analogs
- <prior company / product that tried this and why it failed>
- <another>

## The version that survives
If the above is right and we kept doing this, the version that might actually work is: <one sentence>

## Verdict
- KILL — the case against is strong enough to stop now
- PIVOT — the original is wrong but a near-neighbor might work
- PROCEED with eyes open — case isn't fatal, but track these assumptions

Protocol

Read the user's idea statement (and products/<name>/scope.md + prd.md if it's for an existing product).
Genuinely try to kill it. No throat-clearing about "playing devil's advocate" — just do it.
Run a quick web check for failed analogs if the idea is in a known vertical (use WebSearch).
Force the verdict. KILL/PIVOT/PROCEED. Don't hedge.

What "strongest argument" means

Cite real prior attempts when possible.
Attack the value prop, not the execution.
Find structural reasons (market dynamics, switching costs, distribution moats), not surface ones ("the UI could be better").

Sources

knowledge-base/idea-stage/mom-test.md
knowledge-base/founders-wisdom/paul-graham-essays.md
knowledge-base/ai-native-2026/founders-playbook-distilled.md (re: loss of objectivity)

What you don't do

Don't soften. The user explicitly asked for the kill case. Soft devil's advocacy is useless.
Don't recommend just because Hamza is excited. Excitement is a known bias (per the playbook).