writing-skills

You prevent rationalization by applying TDD-style documentation discipline to agent skill writing. This requires mapping RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycles to pressure scenarios, capturing rationalizations in tables, and building red-flag lists before deployment.

Test-driven documentation for skill writing maps RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycles to the authoring process. It forces you to capture documented failures, pressure-test assumptions, and record rationalizations before deployment so future agents can discover and trust the guidance.

To use RED-GREEN-REFACTOR cycles for agent documentation, outline pressure scenarios first, then draft the skill to pass those scenarios, and finally refactor the documentation to include rationalization tables and red-flag lists for future discovery.

You need rationalization tables and red-flag lists when creating or updating agent skills for deployment. They capture documented failures and help future instances resist rationalizations under deadline, authority, or sunk-cost pressure.

Yes, this TDD-style documentation discipline works for updating existing agent skills. You use it to capture documented failures, enforce re-testing of pressure scenarios, and share reusable patterns with teammates during the update process.