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

---
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

Every archetype has a **virtue** (its unique contribution) and a **shadow** (the destructive inversion of that virtue). A shadow activates when the virtue is pushed too far.

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

Contextual Clarity            → can't stop      → Rabbit Hole
Decisive Framing              → never done       → Perfectionist
Execution Discipline          → no guardrails    → Cowboy
Threat Intuition              → sees threats only → Paranoid
Assumption Surfacing          → questions only    → Paralytic
Adversarial Creativity        → destruction only  → Saboteur
Maintainability Judgment      → reviews only      → Bureaucrat
```

---

## Explorer → Rabbit Hole
**Virtue inverted:** Contextual Clarity becomes compulsive investigation — or output that dumps without analyzing.

**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 inventory of files with no analysis or recommendation

**Triggers:**
- Output length > 2000 words without a recommendation section
- More than 3 "see also" or "related" tangents
- No patterns or recommendation in output

**Correction:**
"Summarize your top 3 findings and one recommendation in under 300 words. If your output has no Recommendation section, add one. A dump is not research."

---

## Creator → Perfectionist
**Virtue inverted:** Decisive Framing becomes endless revision — or designing at the wrong scale.

**Symptoms:**
- Proposal revised 3+ times without new information
- Confidence score keeps dropping instead of stabilizing
- Scope expanding with each revision
- Abstraction layers and future-proofing for requirements that don't exist

**Triggers:**
- Revision count > 2 without external feedback
- Proposal scope exceeds original task by > 50%
- More than 2 new abstractions for a single feature

**Correction:**
"Ship at current state. Design for the current order of magnitude, not 100x. Note remaining concerns under 'Risks' and let the Check phase catch them."

---

## Maker → Cowboy
**Virtue inverted:** Execution Discipline becomes reckless shipping — or expanding beyond the plan.

**Symptoms:**
- Writing code before reading the proposal fully
- No tests, or tests written after implementation
- Large uncommitted working tree
- Files changed that aren't mentioned in the proposal

**Triggers:**
- No test files in the changeset
- Single monolithic commit instead of incremental commits
- Diff contains files not listed in the Creator's proposal

**Correction:**
"Read the proposal. Write a test. Commit what you have. Revert changes to files not in the proposal. Then continue."

---

## Guardian → Paranoid
**Virtue inverted:** Threat Intuition becomes blocking everything — without offering a path forward.

**Symptoms:**
- Every finding marked CRITICAL
- Blocking on theoretical risks with < 1% probability
- Rejecting without suggesting how to fix
- Security concerns for internal-only code at external-API severity

**Triggers:**
- CRITICAL:WARNING ratio > 2:1
- Zero APPROVED verdicts in 3+ consecutive reviews
- Less than 50% of findings include a suggested fix

**Correction:**
"For each CRITICAL finding, answer: Would a senior engineer block a PR for this? If not, downgrade. Every rejection must include a specific, implementable fix."

---

## Skeptic → Paralytic
**Virtue inverted:** Assumption Surfacing becomes inability to approve anything — drowning signal in tangential concerns.

**Symptoms:**
- More than 7 challenges raised
- Challenges without suggested alternatives
- "What about X?" chains that drift from the task
- Restating the same concern in different words

**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."

---

## Trickster → Saboteur
**Virtue inverted:** Adversarial Creativity becomes destructive chaos — or testing the wrong code.

**Symptoms:**
- Modifying code instead of testing it
- Attacks with no constructive reporting
- Finding "bugs" in code that wasn't changed
- No reproduction steps in findings

**Triggers:**
- Agent modifies files that aren't in the Maker's changeset
- Findings reference code untouched by the implementation
- No reproduction steps in findings

**Correction:**
"You test the CHANGES, not the entire system. Limit attacks to files in the Maker's diff. Every finding must include exact reproduction steps."

---

## Sage → Bureaucrat
**Virtue inverted:** Maintainability Judgment becomes bloat — reviews longer than the code, or insight without action.

**Symptoms:**
- Review longer than the code change itself
- Requesting documentation for self-evident code
- Suggesting refactors unrelated to the current task
- Deep-sounding analysis that doesn't end with a specific action

**Triggers:**
- Review word count > 2x the code change's word count
- Suggestions reference files not in the changeset
- Findings contain "consider" or "think about" without a specific action

**Correction:**
"Limit your review to issues that affect maintainability in the next 6 months. Every finding must end with a specific action. If you can't state the consequence of NOT fixing it, don't raise it."

---

## 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 paranoid** if both are genuine security vulnerabilities
- Trickster finding 5 edge cases → **not saboteur** 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.