claude-archeflow-plugin/skills/shadow-detection/SKILL.md

name, description

name	description
shadow-detection	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 — Virtue and Shadow

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 virtues operating outside their healthy range.

Virtue (healthy)              → pushed too far →  Shadow (dysfunction)

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

Triggers:

• Output length > 2000 words without a recommendation section
• More than 3 "see also" or "related" tangents

Correction: "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?"

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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
• Confidence score keeps dropping
• Scope expanding with each revision

Triggers:

• Revision count > 2 without external feedback
• Proposal scope exceeds original task by > 50%

Correction: "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."

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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
• Large uncommitted working tree

Triggers:

• No test files in the changeset
• Single monolithic commit instead of incremental commits
• No commit for > 50% of the implementation work

Correction: "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."

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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
• Security concerns for internal-only code at external-API severity

Triggers:

• CRITICAL:WARNING ratio > 2:1
• Zero APPROVED verdicts in 3+ consecutive reviews
• Findings reference threat models inappropriate to the context

Correction: "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."

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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 outside the task scope

Triggers:

• Challenge count > 7
• Less than 50% of challenges include alternatives
• Same conceptual concern raised multiple times

Correction: "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."

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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
• Attacks with no constructive reporting
• Enjoying destruction more than improving quality

Triggers:

• Agent modifies files that aren't in the Maker's changeset
• No reproduction steps in findings
• Tone shifts from analytical to gleeful

Correction: "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."

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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
• Requesting documentation for self-evident code
• Suggesting refactors unrelated to the current task

Triggers:

• Review word count > 2x the code change's word count
• Suggestions reference files not in the changeset
• More than 30% of findings are INFO severity

Correction: "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."

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Shadow Escalation Protocol

1. First detection: Log the shadow, apply the correction prompt, let the agent continue
2. Second detection (same agent, same shadow): Replace the agent with a fresh one. The shadow is entrenched.
3. Shadow detected in 3+ agents in the same cycle: The task itself may be poorly scoped. Escalate to the user: "Multiple agents are struggling — the task may need to be broken down."

Shadow Immunity

Some behaviors LOOK like shadows but aren't:

• Explorer reading 20 files in a monorepo with scattered dependencies → not a rabbit hole if each file is genuinely relevant
• 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.