quanganh208/ck:predict

ck:predict — Multi-Persona Pre-Analysis

Five expert personas independently analyze a proposed change, then debate conflicts to produce a consensus verdict before a single line of code is written.

When to Use

• Before implementing a major or high-risk feature
• Before a significant refactor or architecture change
• Evaluating competing technical approaches
• Stress-testing assumptions in a proposed design

When NOT to Use

• Trivial or low-risk changes (use ck:debug for bugs, ck:plan for already-decided tasks)
• Already-approved work with no open design questions
• Pure dependency upgrades with no API changes

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The 5 Personas

| Persona | Focus | Core Questions | |---------|-------|----------------| | Architect | System design, scalability, coupling | Does this fit the architecture? Will it scale? What new coupling does it introduce? | | Security | Attack surface, data protection, auth | What can be abused? Where is data exposed? Are auth boundaries respected? | | Performance | Latency, memory, queries, bundle size | What is the latency impact? N+1 queries? Memory leaks? Bundle bloat? | | UX | User experience, accessibility, error states | Is this intuitive? What does the error state look like? Accessible on mobile? | | Devil's Advocate | Hidden assumptions, simpler alternatives | Why not do nothing? What is the simplest alternative? Which assumption could be wrong? |

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Debate Protocol

1. Read the proposed change/feature description from the argument
2. Read relevant code if file paths are provided (grep for affected areas)
3. Each persona analyzes independently — do not let personas influence each other during this phase
4. Identify agreements — points where all (or 4+) personas align
5. Identify conflicts — points where personas meaningfully disagree
6. Weigh tradeoffs — for each conflict, evaluate which concern has higher impact
7. Produce verdict — GO / CAUTION / STOP with actionable recommendations

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Output Format

## Prediction Report: [proposal title]

## Verdict: GO | CAUTION | STOP

### Agreements (all personas align)
- [Point 1 — what they all agree on]
- [Point 2]

### Conflicts & Resolutions

| Topic | Architect | Security | Performance | UX | Devil's Advocate | Resolution |
|-------|-----------|----------|-------------|-----|-----------------|------------|
| [Issue] | [View] | [View] | [View] | [View] | [View] | [Recommendation] |

### Risk Summary

| Risk | Severity | Mitigation |
|------|----------|------------|
| [Risk description] | Critical/High/Medium/Low | [Concrete action] |

### Recommendations
1. [Action item — rationale]
2. [Action item — rationale]
3. [Action item — rationale]

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Verdict Levels

| Verdict | Meaning | |---------|---------| | GO | All personas aligned, no critical risks, proceed with confidence | | CAUTION | Concerns exist but are manageable — mitigations identified, proceed carefully | | STOP | Critical unresolved issue found — needs redesign or more information before proceeding |

STOP Triggers (any one is sufficient)

• Security persona identifies auth bypass or data exposure with no viable mitigation
• Architect identifies fundamental design incompatibility requiring significant rework
• Performance persona identifies unacceptable latency or query explosion with no workaround
• Devil's Advocate exposes a false assumption that invalidates the entire approach

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Integration with Other Skills

| Workflow Step | Skill | How | |---------------|-------|-----| | Deepen risk scenarios | ck:scenario | Feed Risk Summary rows as feature description | | Create implementation plan | ck:plan | Attach Recommendations as constraints to planner | | High-risk feature implementation | ck:cook | Reference CAUTION/STOP items as acceptance gates |

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Example Invocations

/ck:predict "Add WebSocket support for real-time notifications"
/ck:predict "Migrate authentication from JWT to session cookies"
/ck:predict "Add multi-tenancy to the database layer"
/ck:predict "Replace REST API with GraphQL" --files src/api/**/*.ts