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Agent skill

Cross Critique

by warpdotdev in warpdotdev/common-skills

Run a second round on a contested question by circulating each subagent's independent proposal to the other authors and asking for structured pros and cons, then synthesize.

MITAuto-check passedSales & Support

Install Cross Critique

skills CLI
$ npx skills add warpdotdev/common-skills --skill cross-critique -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install warpdotdev/common-skills cross-critique --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/warpdotdev/common-skills.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/.agents/skills/cross-critique .claude/skills/cross-critique && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
cross-critique
GitHub stars
606
Token cost
~1.4k tokens
SKILL.md length
684 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
28
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Run a second round on a contested question by circulating each subagent's independent proposal to the other authors and asking for structured pros and cons, then synthesize.

  • Works in 3 steps: Assemble the proposals → Circulate and ask for structured critique → Synthesize
  • You have multiple independent proposals
  • SKILL.md covers Why this matters, When to use it, Prerequisite: you need… and How to do it, plus 2 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Cross Critique is an agent skill from warpdotdev/common-skills. Run a second round on a contested question by circulating each subagent's independent proposal to the other authors and asking for structured pros and cons, then synthesize. Use this skill whenever you have multiple independent proposals or opinions on a contested decision — architecture tradeoffs, code review disagreements, design choices, competing root-cause theories — and want sharper analysis than you'd produce by synthesizing alone. Pairs naturally with the council and research skills; reach for it…

Its SKILL.md is about 1.4k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Sales & Support, covering Proposals and quotes, Root cause analysis and Subagents. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • You have multiple independent proposals
  • Opinions on a contested decision — architecture tradeoffs
  • Code review disagreements
  • Competing root-cause theories — and want sharper analysis than youd produce by synthesizing alone

Example prompts

  • “/cross-critique”

Workflow steps

3 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Assemble the proposals
  2. Circulate and ask for structured critique
  3. Synthesize

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 69b4753. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are markdown).

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Cross Critique loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 141 tokens; SKILL.md has 684 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~141
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.4k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from warpdotdev/common-skills at commit 69b4753, republished under its MIT licence (© warpdotdev). 684 words, ~1,398 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/cross-critique/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
cross-critique
description
Run a second round on a contested question by circulating each subagent's independent proposal to the other authors and asking for structured pros and cons, then synthesize. Use this skill whenever you have multiple independent proposals or opinions on a contested decision — architecture tradeoffs, code review disagreements, design choices, competing root-cause theories — and want sharper analysis than you'd produce by synthesizing alone. Pairs naturally with the council and research skills; reach for it liberally whenever proposals diverge.

Cross-Critique

Use this skill to run a second round after several subagents have independently produced proposals or opinions on the same contested question. Instead of synthesizing their reports yourself, you circulate each proposal to the other authors and ask them to critique it — pros and cons — and then you synthesize the richer set of analyses that results.

Why this matters

When you generate independent proposals (different models, different angles), each author ends up with deep context on the question — often deeper than yours, since they did the investigation. If you jump straight to synthesizing their reports alone, you're the bottleneck: you can only see the tradeoffs you happen to notice.

Asking the authors to critique each other is what a good leader does when seeking advice: get a few people with differing perspectives in a room, let them poke holes in each other's reasoning, and you walk away with a far more complete picture than any one of them — or you — would produce alone. The authors will surface failure modes, hidden assumptions, and tradeoffs that neither you nor the original proposer flagged.

When to use it

Use cross-critique when a decision is contested — i.e. independent agents produced genuinely divergent proposals, or the question is subjective enough that reasonable approaches disagree. Good fits:

  • Architecture and design tradeoffs.
  • Code review where reviewers reached different conclusions.
  • Competing root-cause theories for a bug.
  • Code-structure or API-shape decisions with no single right answer.

Don't bother when the proposals already strongly agree, or when the question has an objective answer you can verify directly — critique adds latency and tokens, and its value comes specifically from resolving genuine disagreement. Within that scope, use it freely; you don't need a high-stakes justification, just real divergence worth resolving.

Prerequisite: you need independent proposals first

This skill is the second round. It assumes you already have N independent proposals in hand. If you don't yet:

  • For a judgment-heavy decision, generate them with the council skill (model-diverse subagents on the same question).
  • For an investigation-heavy question, generate them by spawning parallel subagents (see the research skill).
  • Or use any ad-hoc set of independent subagent proposals you've already collected.

Critically, the first round must be independent — do not let the authors see each other's work during round one, or you lose the diversity that makes round two valuable.

How to do it

Show full SKILL.md (294 more words)Show less
1. Assemble the proposals

Collect each author's proposal. Keep them concise — the core recommendation and its reasoning, not the full transcript. Consider labeling them neutrally (Proposal A, B, C) and, where practical, anonymizing authorship to reduce bandwagon bias toward whichever model sounds most confident.

2. Circulate and ask for structured critique

Reuse the same subagents from round one rather than spawning fresh ones — they retain their context and can critique from a position of understanding. Send each author the other proposals (not their own) and ask each for:

  • For each alternative: its pros (what it gets right, where it's stronger than my approach) and its cons (risks, edge cases, hidden costs, wrong assumptions).
  • Whether, having seen the alternatives, they would revise their own recommendation — and why or why not.
  • A final ranking or recommendation with confidence.

Insist on both pros and cons for each alternative. An honest critique that credits a rival's strengths is far more useful than a reflexive defense of one's own proposal.

3. Synthesize

Now bring it together yourself. Compare critiques by evidence quality, not vote count. In your final answer:

  • Lead with the recommendation.
  • Note where the authors converged after seeing each other's work — convergence in round two is a strong signal.
  • Surface the most incisive cons raised against each option.
  • Explain why the recommended option survives critique best against the decision criteria.
  • Call out remaining disagreement, confidence, and material unknowns.

Final answer template

Use this shape unless the task calls for something different:

markdown
## Recommendation
[One or two sentences with the decision.]

## How the critiques shifted things
- [Where authors converged or changed their minds after seeing alternatives]
- [The strongest objection raised, and whether it's decisive]

## Why this option wins
- [Reason grounded in the critiques]

## Remaining risks and unknowns
- [Open question or caveat]

Practical notes

  • Keep the critique round read-only unless the underlying task explicitly involves making changes.
  • Don't expose internal subagent IDs in user-facing summaries unless the user asks.
  • If a critique is thin or unsupported, send a focused follow-up to that same author rather than discarding it.

© warpdotdev, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in .agents/skills/cross-critique of warpdotdev/common-skills.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 69b4753

Compare with similar skills

Cross Critique next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Cross Critique compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Cross Critique this skillwarpdotdev/common-skills606—~1.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Exploration Modefjrevoredo/mini-diarium308—~3.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Pre Scaffold Openspec Coherence CheckBlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard316—~1.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Dependabot Fixaxsaucedo/kaos280—~4.2kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Architecture Design Reviewbbartling/open-fdd172—~1.3kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Bug Hunt SwarmDimillian/Skills4k—~1.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Categories

Questions about Cross Critique

What does Cross Critique do?

Run a second round on a contested question by circulating each subagent's independent proposal to the other authors and asking for structured pros and cons, then synthesize. Cross Critique is an agent skill from warpdotdev/common-skills. Run a second round on a contested question by circulating each subagent's independent proposal to the other authors and asking for structured pros and cons, then synthesize.

When should I use Cross Critique?

Cross Critique fits situations like: you have multiple independent proposals; opinions on a contested decision — architecture tradeoffs; code review disagreements; competing root-cause theories — and want sharper analysis than youd produce by synthesizing alone.

How do I install Cross Critique in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add warpdotdev/common-skills --skill cross-critique -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (.agents/skills/cross-critique in warpdotdev/common-skills) into .claude/skills/cross-critique in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Cross Critique in Codex?

Run `npx skills add warpdotdev/common-skills --skill cross-critique -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (.agents/skills/cross-critique in warpdotdev/common-skills) into .agents/skills/cross-critique in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Cross Critique in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add warpdotdev/common-skills --skill cross-critique -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/cross-critique, .gemini/skills/cross-critique, .github/skills/cross-critique and .opencode/skills/cross-critique in your project.

What does Cross Critique need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Cross Critique is instructions for the agent only.

Does Cross Critique access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Cross Critique safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Cross Critique use?

Cross Critique is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Cross Critique use?

About 1.4k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.6k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Cross Critique?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Cross Critique: Exploration Mode (fjrevoredo/mini-diarium, 308 stars), Pre Scaffold Openspec Coherence Check (BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard, 316 stars), Dependabot Fix (axsaucedo/kaos, 280 stars) and Architecture Design Review (bbartling/open-fdd, 172 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Cross Critique?

warpdotdev (a GitHub organization) maintains it in warpdotdev/common-skills, which has 606 GitHub stars. The repository holds 28 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 30, 2026.

Source: warpdotdev/common-skills on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.