Critique

Critique is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by FerroxLabs in ijfw.

210 stars40 forkson FerroxLabs/ijfwAdded 2026/09/04Repository updated 2026/08/31

ai-agentsai-codingclaude-codecodexcursordeveloper-toolsgemini-cligithub-copilotmcpmcp-servermemorynodejstypescriptwindsurf

Install in seconds

Install Critique

Copy Critique into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/FerroxLabs/ijfw/tree/main/claude/skills/ijfw-critique ~/.claude/skills/ijfw-critique

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/FerroxLabs/ijfw.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: claude/skills/ijfw-critique/SKILL.md in FerroxLabs/ijfw
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/ijfw-critique
Collection: One of 25 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 2970 skills

What Critique does

Critique challenges decisions, surfaces assumptions, and offers concrete counter-arguments when someone asks for a second opinion or devil’s advocate. It also reframes non-trivial refactors toward the elegant solution before choosing a pragmatic fix.

Critique is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Critique comes from a repository tagged ai-agents, ai-coding, claude-code, codex and cursor.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Before you agree, disagree. Before you advise, stress-test.

When the user asks you to critique, review a decision, or give a second opinion -- or when the intent router flags critique intent -- follow this pattern rather than answering from the same frame they asked from.

Four-step critique

Steelman first. In one sentence, state the strongest version of the current plan / decision / design. Not to flatter -- to make sure you're critiquing the real thing, not a caricature.
Surface the assumptions. Name 2-3 assumptions the plan rests on. These are the load-bearing beliefs that, if wrong, collapse the argument. Be specific: "assumes traffic stays under 10k qps", not "assumes scale".

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Critique

What else does FerroxLabs publish alongside Critique?
Critique is one of 25 skills that DirSkills catalogs from FerroxLabs/ijfw, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Auto Memorize, IJFW AGENTS.md Manager and IJFW Commit. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Critique does, and is maintained by FerroxLabs in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the FerroxLabs/ijfw page.
How does Critique compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Critique ranks #2684 by stars among the 2970 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Critique against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.