# Skill Pressure Test

Interrogate a plan, decision, or design one question at a time until it holds, use to...

- Repository: https://github.com/nyldn/claude-octopus (4351 stars)
- Category: Design
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2026-11-01
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add nyldn/claude-octopus --skill skill-pressure-test -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add nyldn/claude-octopus --skill skill-pressure-test -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add nyldn/claude-octopus --skill skill-pressure-test -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add nyldn/claude-octopus --skill skill-pressure-test -g -a gemini-cli -y`
Claude Code plugin marketplace: `/plugin marketplace add nyldn/claude-octopus`

## Description

Interrogate a plan, decision, or design one question at a time until it holds, use to stress-test your own thinking before committing to it

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Pressure Test

Interview the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or design until you both
reach a shared understanding of it. Walk each branch of the decision tree,
resolving dependencies between decisions one at a time.

This is not brainstorming. `skill-thought-partner` opens a space up and looks for
what might be there; this closes one down and looks for what is wrong with it.
Use this when there is already a position on the table and the risk is that it is
wrong in a way nobody has said out loud.

Adapted from the `grilling` skill in
[mattpocock/skills](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills) (MIT).

## When To Use

- The user has a plan, spec, or design and wants it attacked before they commit.
- A decision keeps getting deferred because its dependencies are tangled.
- Scope feels slippery and nobody can say precisely what is in it.
- Before a large or hard-to-reverse change, where being wrong is expensive.

## When Not To Use

- To generate options. That is `skill-decision-support`.
- To explore an open space with no position yet. That is `skill-thought-partner`.
- When the user wants the work done, not examined. Say so and stop.
- When you can settle the question by reading the codebase. Read it instead.

## Inputs

The plan, decision, or design under test, in whatever form exists, a document, a
paragraph, or just the last few turns of conversation. Nothing needs writing up
first; extracting the shape is part of the job.

## Workflow

**Ask one question at a time.** Wait for the answer before asking the next. A
batch of questions is a questionnaire, and it gets questionnaire answers:
shallow, and shaped by whichever one the reader happened to care about. One
question, answered properly, changes what the next question should be.

The rest: https://github.com/nyldn/claude-octopus/blob/HEAD/.claude/skills/skill-pressure-test/SKILL.md