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              → over-builds      → Over-Architect
Execution Discipline          → no guardrails    → Rogue
Threat Intuition              → sees threats only → Paranoid
Assumption Surfacing          → questions only    → Paralytic
Adversarial Creativity        → noise over signal → False Alarm
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 → Over-Architect
**Virtue inverted:** Decisive Framing becomes designing at the wrong scale.

**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 single feature
- "In the future we might need..." appears in rationale
- Proposal scope exceeds original task by > 50%

**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 → Rogue
**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 → False Alarm
**Virtue inverted:** Adversarial Creativity becomes noise — too many low-signal findings drowning the real issues.

**Symptoms:**
- Testing code that wasn't changed
- Reporting non-bugs as bugs (unrealistic test scenarios)
- 20 findings when 3 good ones would cover the real risks
- Edge cases for edge cases (diminishing returns)

**Triggers:**
- Findings reference code untouched by the implementation
- More than 10 findings for a small change
- Findings describe scenarios that can't happen in the actual deployment context

**Correction:**
"Quality over quantity. Delete findings outside the Maker's diff. Rank remaining by likelihood × impact. Keep top 3-5. Three real findings beat twenty noise."

---

## 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 adding an abstraction → **not over-architect** if the abstraction is genuinely needed by the current task
- Guardian blocking with 2 CRITICAL findings → **not paranoid** if both are genuine security vulnerabilities
- Trickster finding 5 edge cases → **not false alarm** 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.