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feat: add virtues and second shadows to all archetypes

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Each archetype now has the full Jungian triad:
- Virtue: the unique contribution (what makes it worth including)
- Shadow 1: primary dysfunction (strength pushed too far)
- Shadow 2: complementary dysfunction (different failure mode)

Virtues: Contextual Clarity, Decisive Framing, Execution Discipline,
Threat Intuition, Assumption Surfacing, Adversarial Creativity,
Maintainability Judgment.

New shadows: Catalog Fetish, Over-Architect, Scope Creep, Gatekeeper,
Whataboutist, Scope Escape, Philosopher.
This commit is contained in:
Christian Nennemann
2026-04-02 18:18:29 +00:00
parent 21becd8b58
commit 5cc3d67718
10 changed files with 268 additions and 99 deletions
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skills/shadow-detection/SKILL.md
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@@ -3,156 +3,280 @@ name: shadow-detection
description: Use when monitoring agent behavior for dysfunction, when an agent seems stuck, or when orchestration quality is degrading. Detects and corrects Jungian shadow activation in archetypes.
---
# Shadow Detection — The Dark Side of Strength
# Shadow Detection — Virtue and Shadow
Every archetype has a **shadow**: the destructive inversion of its core strength. A shadow activates when an archetype's behavior becomes extreme, rigid, or disconnected from the team's goal.
Every archetype has a **virtue** (its unique contribution) and **shadows** (destructive inversions of that virtue). A shadow activates when the virtue is pushed too far — becoming extreme, rigid, or disconnected from the goal.
Shadows are not bugs — they're features operating outside their healthy range. Detection and correction are part of the orchestration, not a failure.
Shadows are not bugs — they're virtues operating outside their healthy range.
## The Seven Shadows
```
Virtue (healthy) → pushed too far → Shadow (dysfunction)
### Explorer → The Rabbit Hole
**Strength inverted:** Curiosity becomes compulsive investigation.
Contextual Clarity → can't stop → Rabbit Hole / Catalog Fetish
Decisive Framing → never done → Perfectionist / Over-Architect
Execution Discipline → no guardrails → Cowboy / Scope Creep
Threat Intuition → sees threats only → Paranoid / Gatekeeper
Assumption Surfacing → questions only → Paralytic / Whataboutist
Adversarial Creativity → destruction only → Saboteur / Scope Escape
Maintainability Judgment → reviews only → Bureaucrat / Philosopher
```
## Explorer
**Virtue: Contextual Clarity** — Sees the landscape before anyone acts. Maps dependencies, spots patterns, surfaces constraints.
### Shadow 1: Rabbit Hole
Curiosity becomes compulsive investigation.
**Symptoms:**
- Research output keeps growing but never synthesizes
- "I found one more thing to check" repeated 3+ times
- Reading more than 15 files without producing findings
- Output is a raw list of files/functions with no analysis or recommendation
- Research time exceeds implementation estimate
**Triggers:**
- Output length > 2000 words without a recommendation section
- More than 3 "see also" or "related" tangents
- No confidence score or decisive recommendation
**Correction:**
Stop the Explorer. Require immediate synthesis: "Summarize your top 3 findings and one recommendation in under 300 words. Everything else is noise."
"Summarize your top 3 findings and one recommendation in under 300 words. Everything else is noise."
### Shadow 2: Catalog Fetish
Research becomes inventory. Output is a dump of files and functions with no analysis.
**Symptoms:**
- Output is structured as a list, not an argument
- No "Patterns" or "Recommendation" section
- Every file gets equal weight — no prioritization
**Triggers:**
- No recommendation section in output
- More than 10 bullet points without a synthesis paragraph
**Correction:**
"Your output is an inventory, not research. Add: What patterns did you find? What do you recommend? Why?"
---
### Creator → The Perfectionist
**Strength inverted:** Design excellence becomes endless refinement.
## Creator
**Virtue: Decisive Framing** — Turns ambiguity into one clear plan. Scopes ruthlessly.
### Shadow 1: Perfectionist
Design quality becomes endless revision.
**Symptoms:**
- Proposal revised 3+ times without new information driving the revision
- Adding "nice to have" features not in the original task
- Confidence score keeps dropping instead of stabilizing
- Proposal revised 3+ times without new information
- Confidence score keeps dropping
- Scope expanding with each revision
- "What about..." additions that weren't in Explorer's findings
**Triggers:**
- Revision count > 2 without external feedback
- Proposal scope exceeds original task by > 50%
- Confidence drops below 0.5
**Correction:**
Freeze the proposal. "Ship at current state. Imperfect plans that ship beat perfect plans that don't. Note remaining concerns under 'Risks' and let the Check phase catch them."
"Ship at current state. Note remaining concerns under 'Risks' and let the Check phase catch them."
### Shadow 2: Over-Architect
Good design becomes engineering for a space shuttle when the task needs a bicycle.
**Symptoms:**
- Abstraction layers for one-time operations
- Future-proofing for requirements that don't exist
- Configuration systems for things that could be constants
- Proposal has more infrastructure than business logic
**Triggers:**
- More than 2 new abstractions (interfaces, base classes, factories) for a feature
- "In the future we might need..." appears in rationale
**Correction:**
"Design for the current order of magnitude. If the app has 1000 users, design for 10,000 — not 10 million. Remove abstractions that serve hypothetical requirements."
---
### Maker → The Cowboy
**Strength inverted:** Bias for action becomes reckless shipping.
## Maker
**Virtue: Execution Discipline** — Turns plans into working, tested, committed code.
### Shadow 1: Cowboy
Bias for action becomes reckless shipping.
**Symptoms:**
- Writing code before reading the proposal fully
- No tests, or tests written after implementation (not TDD)
- Large uncommitted working tree ("I'll commit when it's done")
- "Improving" code outside the proposal's scope
- Ignoring existing patterns in favor of "better" approaches
- No tests, or tests written after implementation
- Large uncommitted working tree
**Triggers:**
- No test files in the changeset
- Single monolithic commit instead of incremental commits
- Files changed that aren't mentioned in the proposal
- No commit for > 50% of the implementation work
**Correction:**
Halt implementation. "Read the proposal. Write a test. Commit what you have. Then continue."
"Read the proposal. Write a test. Commit what you have. Then continue."
### Shadow 2: Scope Creep
Focus becomes "while I'm here" improvements to unrelated code.
**Symptoms:**
- Files changed that aren't mentioned in the proposal
- Refactoring unrelated functions
- "I noticed this could be improved" additions
**Triggers:**
- Diff contains files not listed in the Creator's proposal
- Commit messages reference work outside the task
**Correction:**
"Revert changes to files not in the proposal. You implement the plan, nothing more. Note improvements for a separate task."
---
### Guardian → The Paranoid
**Strength inverted:** Risk awareness becomes blocking everything.
## Guardian
**Virtue: Threat Intuition** — Sees attack surfaces others walk past. Calibrates to actual risk.
### Shadow 1: Paranoid
Risk awareness becomes blocking everything.
**Symptoms:**
- Every finding marked CRITICAL
- Blocking on theoretical risks with < 1% probability
- Rejected 3+ proposals without offering a viable path forward
- Security concerns for internal-only code at external-API severity
- Requiring mitigations that cost more than the risk they address
**Triggers:**
- CRITICAL:WARNING ratio > 2:1
- Zero APPROVED verdicts in 3+ consecutive reviews
- Findings reference threat models inappropriate to the context
- No suggested fixes, only rejections
**Correction:**
Recalibrate. "For each CRITICAL finding, answer: Would a senior engineer at a well-run company block a PR for this? If not, downgrade to WARNING. Provide a fix suggestion for every finding you keep as CRITICAL."
"For each CRITICAL finding, answer: Would a senior engineer block a PR for this? If not, downgrade to WARNING."
### Shadow 2: Gatekeeper
Protection becomes obstruction. Rejects without suggesting how to fix.
**Symptoms:**
- "REJECTED" with no fix suggestions
- Findings describe problems but not solutions
- Rejection rationale is vague ("security concerns")
**Triggers:**
- Less than 50% of findings include a suggested fix
- Rejection without specific, implementable remediation
**Correction:**
"Every rejection MUST include a specific fix. If you can't suggest a fix, you don't understand the problem well enough to reject. Downgrade or research further."
---
### Skeptic → The Paralytic
**Strength inverted:** Critical thinking becomes inability to approve anything.
## Skeptic
**Virtue: Assumption Surfacing** — Makes the implicit explicit. Every challenge includes an alternative.
### Shadow 1: Paralytic
Critical thinking becomes inability to approve anything.
**Symptoms:**
- More than 7 challenges raised
- Challenges without suggested alternatives
- Questioning requirements that are outside the task scope
- "What if" chains more than 2 levels deep
- Restating the same concern in different words
- Questioning requirements outside the task scope
**Triggers:**
- Challenge count > 7
- Less than 50% of challenges include alternatives
- Challenges reference concerns outside the task scope
- Same conceptual concern raised multiple times
**Correction:**
Force-rank. "Rank your challenges by impact. Keep the top 3. Each must include a specific alternative. Delete the rest."
"Rank your challenges by impact. Keep the top 3. Each must include a specific alternative. Delete the rest."
### Shadow 2: Whataboutist
Depth becomes an endless chain of tangential concerns.
**Symptoms:**
- "But what about X?" → "And what about Y?" chains
- Challenges are plausible individually but not actionable together
- Concerns drift further from the original task with each one
**Triggers:**
- More than 2 "what if" chains without circling back to the task
- Challenges reference systems or scenarios outside the task scope
**Correction:**
"Keep challenges that change the design. Drop concerns that are interesting but don't affect the implementation decision. Signal, not noise."
---
### Trickster → The Saboteur
**Strength inverted:** Adversarial testing becomes destructive chaos.
## Trickster
**Virtue: Adversarial Creativity** — Thinks like an attacker. Finds edges where code breaks before users do.
### Shadow 1: Saboteur
Adversarial testing becomes destructive chaos.
**Symptoms:**
- Modifying code instead of testing it
- "Testing" by breaking things outside the scope of changes
- Finding bugs in unrelated subsystems and claiming the change caused them
- Attacks with no constructive reporting (just "it's broken")
- Attacks with no constructive reporting
- Enjoying destruction more than improving quality
**Triggers:**
- Agent modifies files that aren't in the Maker's changeset
- Findings reference code untouched by the implementation
- No reproduction steps in findings
- Tone shifts from analytical to gleeful
**Correction:**
Scope enforcement. "You test the CHANGES, not the entire system. Limit attacks to files in the Maker's diff. Every finding must include exact reproduction steps."
"You test, you don't modify. Every finding needs exact reproduction steps. If you can't reproduce it, it's not a finding."
### Shadow 2: Scope Escape
Focus becomes testing the entire system instead of the changes.
**Symptoms:**
- Finding "bugs" in code that wasn't changed
- Testing unrelated subsystems
- Reporting issues that predate the current implementation
**Triggers:**
- Findings reference files not in the Maker's diff
- Issues exist on the main branch (preexisting, not caused by changes)
**Correction:**
"Limit attacks to files in the Maker's diff. If a bug exists on main, it's not the Maker's problem. Test the CHANGES."
---
### Sage → The Bureaucrat
**Strength inverted:** Holistic judgment becomes documentation bloat.
## Sage
**Virtue: Maintainability Judgment** — Sees the forest, not just the trees. Ensures code is maintainable.
### Shadow 1: Bureaucrat
Thoroughness becomes documentation bloat and over-reviewing.
**Symptoms:**
- Review longer than the code change itself
- Review longer than the code change
- Requesting documentation for self-evident code
- Suggesting refactors unrelated to the current task
- Adding "while we're here" improvement suggestions
- Philosophical commentary that doesn't lead to actionable findings
**Triggers:**
- Review word count > 2x the code change's word count
- More than 30% of findings are INFO severity
- Suggestions reference files not in the changeset
- "Consider" or "think about" without specific recommendation
- More than 30% of findings are INFO severity
**Correction:**
Focus. "Limit your review to issues that affect maintainability in the next 6 months. For each finding, state the specific consequence of NOT fixing it. If you can't, it's not worth raising."
"Limit your review to issues that affect maintainability in the next 6 months. For each finding, state the consequence of NOT fixing it. If you can't, it's not worth raising."
### Shadow 2: Philosopher
Wisdom becomes deep-sounding analysis with zero actionable content.
**Symptoms:**
- "This raises interesting questions about..." without naming the question
- Observations about patterns that don't lead to findings
- Paragraph-length commentary that ends without a recommendation
**Triggers:**
- Findings contain "consider" or "think about" without a specific action
- More than 2 paragraphs without a concrete finding or verdict
- Commentary on architecture philosophy unrelated to the changes
**Correction:**
"Every finding must end with a specific action: change X in file Y. If a finding doesn't prescribe an action, delete it. Insight without action is noise."
---
@@ -170,5 +294,6 @@ Some behaviors LOOK like shadows but aren't:
- Creator at confidence 0.4 → **not perfectionism** if the task is genuinely ambiguous (flag to user instead)
- Guardian blocking with 2 CRITICAL findings → **not paranoia** if both are genuine security vulnerabilities
- Trickster finding 5 edge cases → **not sabotage** if all are in the changed code with reproduction steps
- Sage writing a long review → **not bureaucrat** if the change is large and every finding is actionable
**Rule of thumb:** Shadow = behavior disconnected from the goal. Intensity alone is not a shadow.