Roast

Roast

Why

Claude's default is to agree with you. roast is the opposite. It convenes a council of six independent persona agents who tear an idea apart and build it up from every angle, then a Judge synthesizes everything into one honest verdict. Use it before you sink time and money into building the wrong thing.

The council is adversarial on purpose. No persona is allowed to hedge or be polite. The point is to surface what you can't see because you're too close to it.

This is a pre-engineering gate: it decides whether an idea is worth turning into scoped work at all. If the idea already survived a roast and just needs scoping, hand off to clarify-work or decompose-to-issues instead.

Step 1: Get the brief

If $ARGUMENTS contains the idea, start there. Then ask the user a tight set of clarifying questions so the council has real context to work with. Ask only what hasn't already been provided. Keep it to 3-4 questions max, in one batch:

1. The idea in one or two sentences (what it is, what it does).
2. Who it's for and how it makes money (the buyer + the price/model).
3. Your edge — relevant skills, audience, or assets you already have.
4. Constraints — budget, timeline, how fast you need first dollar.

If the user says "just run it" or gives you enough already, skip the questions and proceed. Don't over-interrogate. One round, then convene the council.

Write the brief into a single short paragraph you will paste into every council member's prompt, so all six judge the same thing.

Step 2: Convene the council (6 agents, in parallel)

Spin up all six agents in parallel in a single message (one Agent call each, subagent_type: general-purpose). Paste the same brief into each, then give each its persona mandate below.

Each council member must return: a one-line stance, their 3-5 sharpest points, the single most important thing the user must hear, and a 1-10 score on their own dimension (1 = walk away, 10 = no-brainer). The six scores are not on the same scale and must never be averaged — see Step 3.

1. The Contrarian (Red Team) > You are the Contrarian on an idea council. Assume this idea fails. Your job is to find the fatal flaws, the fastest way it dies, and the load-bearing assumptions that are probably wrong. Be ruthless and specific. No hedging, no "but it could work." Attack the weakest points. THE BRIEF: [brief]

2. The Expansionist (Bull) > You are the Expansionist on an idea council. Make the strongest possible case FOR this idea. Find the biggest upside, the 10x version, the adjacent opportunities and unlock points the founder isn't seeing. Fight for the potential. Be specific about where the real money and leverage could be. THE BRIEF: [brief]

3. The Logician (First principles) > You are the Logician on an idea council. Use NO outside research and NO web. Reason purely from first principles: does the core mechanism make sense, do the incentives line up, is the underlying logic sound, does the math even work in theory? Strip it to fundamentals and tell us if it holds together. THE BRIEF: [brief]

4. The Researcher (Evidence) > You are the Researcher on an idea council. Use web search. Bring real-world evidence: who the existing competitors are, market size or demand signals, what comparable products charge, whether this is validated by what's already out there or contradicted by it. Cite what you find. Is the real world saying yes or no? THE BRIEF: [brief]

5. The Buyer (Voice of customer) > You are the Buyer on an idea council. Role-play the exact target customer described in the brief. React as them, in first person. Would you actually pay for this? What's your real objection? What would make you choose a competitor or just do nothing instead? What price feels right, and what would make you say yes today? Be the honest, slightly skeptical customer, not a cheerleader. THE BRIEF: [brief]

6. The Futurist (Industry trends) > You are the Futurist on an idea council. Use web search. Your job is to judge this idea against where the market is heading, not where it is today. Surface the demand shifts, emerging guest/buyer expectations, and structural changes (consolidation, platform moves, regulation, technology) over the next 1-3 years. Does this idea ride a rising trend or fight a falling one? Is it early, on-time, or late? Distinguish durable shifts from hype, and name the counter-trend that could erode the idea's edge. Cite what you find. THE BRIEF: [brief]

Step 3: The Judge delivers the verdict

Once all six return, YOU act as the Judge — do not spawn a seventh agent for this. Read every council member's findings, weigh them, and synthesize one decisive verdict. Do not average the six scores; they measure different dimensions (survivability, upside, logical soundness, market evidence, willingness to pay, trend direction), not one scale. Name the real tension between the personas and resolve it.

Fold in the economics lens yourself: rough pricing, realistic time-to-first-dollar, and whether the user can actually ship this fast given the edge they described.

Output the verdict in this exact shape:

## THE VERDICT: GO / RESHAPE / KILL
Confidence: [low / medium / high]

**The call in one line:** [the decision, plainly]

**Why:** [2-3 sentences resolving the council's tension]

**Biggest risk:** [the single thing most likely to kill it]
**Biggest upside:** [the strongest reason to do it]

**Money read:** [rough price, time-to-first-dollar, can they ship fast]

**The cheapest 48-hour test:** [the smallest, fastest thing they can do
to validate the riskiest assumption BEFORE building anything]

**If RESHAPE:** [the specific pivot that fixes the fatal flaw while keeping the upside]

Then list the six council scores in one line: Contrarian X/10 · Expansionist X/10 · Logician X/10 · Researcher X/10 · Buyer X/10 · Futurist X/10.

Guardrails

• Every persona stays in character. None of them hedges or softens. The value is in the friction.
• The Judge must make an actual call. "It depends" is not a verdict. Pick GO, RESHAPE, or KILL and own it.
• The cheapest 48-hour test is the most important output. It's how the user finds out if they're right without building the whole thing.
• Keep the final verdict skimmable. The council does the depth; the Judge does the decision.
• This spins up 6 parallel subagents, two of which do live web search — real token and time cost. Reserve it for an actual go/no-go call on a new idea, not for minor features or incremental changes to something already validated.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: wakqasahmed
• Source: wakqasahmed/ai-engineering-workflow-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.