lythoskill-sober · diff

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9 added, 0 removed. Audit A to A.

---

name: lythoskill-sober

version: {{PACKAGE_VERSION}}

type: standard

description: |

Stay clear-headed. Before you commit to a conclusion, check your basis.

Is this evidence or assumption? Do the sources agree? What's the

confidence per claim — not in general, but specifically? When you catch

yourself listing risks without checking, or hesitating between

directions without data, that's the signal to stop and verify.

when_to_use: |

ALSO trigger when: listing risks without investigating, switching directions

due to uncertainty, assuming broken before confirming, about to act on

unverified information — PAUSE the action, verify first, only proceed if

evidence supports, or encountering a factual claim you are unsure about

that can be verified by search — if doubt → divert → ACTIVATE.

Verify claim, fact-check, cross-reference sources, how confident, detect bias,

source filtering, evidence assessment, multi-source analysis, compare agents,

三方测评. ALSO when curator fact-check SOP requires structured verification.

allowed-tools:

- WebSearch

- WebFetch

- Bash(gh:api:*)

- Bash(bunx @lythos/skill-arena@*:*)

- Bash(bunx @lythos/skill-curator@*:*)

---

# Sober — Second Thought

> Not a tool. A posture. Stay clear-headed. Check your basis.

> Arena = multi-agent verification infra. Curator = memory.

> Sober = the cognitive baseline connecting them.

## Core Practice

These 7 practices keep decisions grounded in evidence, not impulse.

### 1. Decompose before searching

Vague claims ("fast", "reliable", "better than Y") are unverifiable. Break into

atomic, independently testable sub-claims before searching for evidence.

Flag unverifiable claims explicitly — don't guess.

### 2. Independence > count

10 sources citing the same report = 1 source. Sources that cite each other are

echo, not convergence. Always trace to primary source.

### 3. L3 > L2 > L1 (自己动手丰衣足食)

Arena self-test (L3) beats hub review (L2) beats author description (L1).

One arena run is worth more than 5 external reviews. If no L3 data exists,

the first recommendation is always: run arena.

### 4. Toggle sources to see bias

Filtering sources should change the picture — if it doesn't, you don't have

enough diversity. A source that systematically deviates is detected bias,

not noise. Record the pattern: "Hub A rates TS skills +2 above arena baseline."

### 5. Per-claim confidence, not aggregate score

"Claim A: HIGH (3 arena + 1 hub), Claim B: LOW (author-only)" is more useful

than "7.3/10 overall." Aggregate scores hide which parts are verified and

which are guesswork.

### 6. Express with provenance

Every confidence assignment carries source citations. The reader should be

able to trace each claim back to its evidence. Without provenance, confidence

is just another opinion.

### 7. Persist to curator

Assessment results are curator QA data. `curator tag --qa` writes per-claim

confidence with provenance. Next time the same skill is evaluated, prior

assessments are in the cache. Your clear-headed work compounds.

+ ### 8. Ground documentation against ground truth

+ When auditing documentation (site, README, wiki), always verify:

+ - **Positioning**: does the hero/tagline describe what the project IS, not what it resembles? "Skill collection" ≠ governance layer.

+ - **External references**: every repo URL, skill name, and attribution must be verified against the actual source. `frontend-design` is from `anthropics/skills`, not `obra/superpowers` — agent fabrication fills gaps with plausible-sounding wrong answers.

+ - **Command syntax**: every command in a code block must be runnable (`bunx @lythos/...`, not bare shorthand).

+ - **Path claims**: never imply a single path is the "sole" valid option. Cross-reference against `cortex/wiki/04-ssot/conventions.md`.

+ These four checks are the minimum viable sober doc audit. They catch the "agent scan → learn poorly → fabricate" pattern that produced the site's original P0 errors (wrong tagline, wrong skill attribution). Run them on every doc change before claiming "done."

## When You Notice Yourself Drifting

```

Doubt or hesitation

→ Decompose (Practice 1)

→ Search (WebSearch + curator query + arena)

→ Cross-reference (Practice 2, 3)

→ Bias check (Practice 4)

→ Confidence per sub-claim (Practice 5)

→ Express with provenance (Practice 6)

→ Persist to curator (Practice 7)

```

## Concrete Patterns

**Evaluating a claim**: "Is X actually good?"

→ arena single → cross-reference hub reviews → curator tag --qa

**Cross-player review** (三方独立测评): "Compare Claude vs Kimi vs DeepSeek on task Y"

→ arena vs --players claude,kimi,deepseek → 3 independent verdicts

→ cross-reference agreement/disagreement → bias detection per model

→ "All 3 agree on A. Claude+Kimi agree on B, DeepSeek dissents on C."

**Hub cross-validation**: "Hub A says 9/10, Hub B says 4/10 — who's right?"

→ arena self-test as tiebreaker → detect which hub aligns with reality

→ curator insight: "Hub A systematically +2 on TS skills"

## When You Need More Capability

This skill helps you recognize WHAT needs verification. If the task exceeds

your current toolkit:

- **curator** finds skills for verification, security audit, benchmarking, domain expertise

- **deck** assembles discovered skills into a targeted configuration

The pipeline: sober identifies the gap → curator discovers the skill → deck assembles.

## Reminders

- **Confidence ≠ certainty**: LOW confidence doesn't mean the claim is false.

It means there's insufficient evidence. Recommend what would raise confidence.

- **Bias is data**: don't "correct" for bias by adjusting scores. Record the

pattern and let the reader apply their own filter.

- **Listing risks ≠ checking**: Writing down "this might be wrong" without

searching is analysis paralysis. The trigger is the ACT of searching, not

the awareness of doubt.

- **Confidence gates action**: LOW on a premise that anchors an action → BLOCK.

CONTRADICTED → DO NOT ACT without resolving the contradiction. Checking

without gating the action is half the job.

- **Sober is posture, curator is memory**: this skill describes HOW to stay

clear-headed. Curator stores WHAT was found.

- **Arena IS the multi-agent infra**: don't build your own testing layer.

Arena already spawns independent agents and produces verdicts. Use it.