Critical Developer Mindset

A Claude Code skill that embodies the senior developer mindset: trust no one's requirements blindly, see what others don't see, and apply engineering knowledge beyond the acceptance criteria.

Philosophy

"AC is scope, not specification. Your engineering brain defines how to do it right."

This skill transforms how you approach any technical task by applying a systematic 7-step critical analysis framework combined with powerful research and code analysis tools.

The 7-Step Framework

1. QUESTION   → What gaps exist in the requirement?
2. RESEARCH   → What don't I know? (Use tools to find out)
3. VALIDATE   → Is this the actual problem to solve?
4. EXPAND     → What ripple effects will this cause?
5. SECURE     → What security/reliability concerns exist?
6. FUTURE     → Will this scale appropriately?
7. IMPLEMENT  → With all insights applied

Features

Critical Thinking

• Gap detection (edge cases, concurrency, state, failures, dependencies)
• Rationalization rejection (excuses developers make)
• Red flags identification
• Stakeholder communication templates

Research Capabilities

• Version-correct library docs (Context7)
• General web research (WebSearch, WebFetch)
• GitHub research through the gh CLI

Code Analysis (Serena)

• Symbol navigation: definitions, references, implementations
• Language-server diagnostics per file or per symbol
• Symbol-level edits and project-wide rename

Memory & Context (Serena)

• Project memories that survive between sessions

Installation

For Claude Code

Copy the skill to your skills directory:

# Clone the repo
git clone git@github.com:tawanorg/critical-thinking.git

# Symlink to Claude Code skills
ln -s $(pwd)/critical-thinking ~/.claude/skills/critical-developer-mindset

Or copy directly:

cp -r critical-thinking ~/.claude/skills/critical-developer-mindset

For Other Runtimes

The skill follows the agentskills.io specification and can be adapted for:

• Codex CLI
• Copilot CLI
• Gemini CLI

Usage

Invoke the Skill

/critical-developer-mindset

Use the Requirement Analyst Agent

# Delegate the analysis to a subagent
Use the Agent tool with subagent_type "general-purpose" and a prompt of
"Apply the critical-developer-mindset skill to: Users should be able to
export their data as CSV"

The Critical Developer Creed

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                 THE CRITICAL DEVELOPER CREED                │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 1. AC is scope, not specification                          │
│ 2. Question everything, assume nothing                      │
│ 3. Research before assuming - verify with official sources  │
│ 4. Think about failure before success                       │
│ 5. Security is implicit, never optional                     │
│ 6. Your code, your responsibility                           │
│ 7. See what others don't see                                │
│ 8. Speak up when something's wrong                          │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Files

• SKILL.md - Main skill definition with the 7-step framework
• AGENTS.md - Agent configurations for automated analysis
• README.md - This file

Requirements

Two MCP servers, both optional — the framework works without them, but the tool tables in SKILL.md assume they are present:

Server	Provides	Install
serena	Symbol-level code navigation and editing over a real language server	uv tool install serena-agent, then claude mcp add serena -s user -- serena start-mcp-server --context ide-assistant
context7	Version-correct library documentation	claude mcp add context7 -s user --transport http https://mcp.context7.com/mcp

GitHub research goes through the gh CLI rather than an MCP server. Google Workspace tools come from the connectors on your Claude account, not from anything installed here.

License

MIT

Author

Created with Claude Code.