doubt-driven-development

doubt-driven-development is an open-source security skill for Claude Code and compatible agents, published by addyosmani. Its author describes it as: “Subjects every non-trivial decision to a fresh-context adversarial review before it stands. Use when correctness matters more than speed, when working in unfamiliar code, when stakes are high (production, security-sen…”. The project has 88k stars on GitHub and is available under the MIT license. Add it to your setup with `/plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skills`.

What doubt-driven-development does

A confident answer is not a correct one. Long sessions accumulate context that quietly turns assumptions into "facts" without anyone noticing. Doubt-driven development is the discipline of materializing a fresh-context reviewer — biased to **disprove**, not approve — before any non-trivial output stands.

Installation

Add doubt-driven-development to your agent with:

/plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skills

Always review a skill's source before installing it. This command comes from the skill's public repository; the linked repo is the source of truth for exact setup steps.

What's inside

The SKILL.md for doubt-driven-development is organised into these sections:

• Overview
• When to Use
• Loading Constraints
• The Process
• Step 1: CLAIM — Surface what stands
• Step 2: EXTRACT — Smallest reviewable unit
• Step 3: DOUBT — Invoke the fresh-context reviewer
• Step 4: RECONCILE — Fold findings back
• Step 5: STOP — Bounded loop, not recursion
• Common Rationalizations
• Red Flags
• Interaction with Other Skills

When to use it

Reach for doubt-driven-development when you want security help from your agent without writing the same instructions every session. Load the skill and the agent picks it up automatically for relevant tasks.

Strengths

• Clear MIT license — safe to read and adapt
• Ships in addyosmani/agent-skills, an established project with 88,280 GitHub stars
• Actively maintained (recent commits)

Topics

Frequently asked questions

What does doubt-driven-development do?

Subjects every non-trivial decision to a fresh-context adversarial review before it stands. Use when correctness matters more than speed, when working in unfamiliar code, when stakes are high (production, security-sensitive logic, irreversible operations), or any time a confident output would be cheaper to verify now than to debug later.

How do I install doubt-driven-development?

Run /plugin marketplace add addyosmani/agent-skills in your agent, then reload your skills. Review the source at https://github.com/addyosmani/agent-skills before installing.

Is doubt-driven-development free to use?

Yes. doubt-driven-development is free and open source under the MIT license, so you can read, run, and adapt it within that license's terms.

Where does doubt-driven-development come from?

doubt-driven-development ships inside addyosmani/agent-skills, a repository that contains 25 catalogued skills in total. The repository's 88,280 GitHub stars apply to that whole collection, not to this skill on its own.