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Pushback

Pushback

The critical eye you need to make things better.

Pushback takes something that already exists — a draft, a plan, a decision, or a chat you had with another agent — and finds what is actually wrong with it. It forms its own opinion rather than executing instructions, and it leads with the issue that matters most rather than the one that is easiest to explain.

It is built for positive friction. If the answer is "this works, ship it", it says that in one line and stops, rather than inventing problems to look thorough.

Call it when

  • You have a draft, a plan, code or a decision you are about to make.
  • You have only a half-formed idea. Pushback will push on the thinking without waiting for an artefact.
  • A chat with another agent went along with everything and you want to know what went unexamined.

The move that makes it worth mentioning into a chat

This is the most common way Pushback gets used, and it does something specific with it. Brought into an existing thread, it reads the whole arc rather than the last message, and it checks whether the previous agent actually pressure-tested anything: an assumption accepted without asking what happens if it is wrong, an obvious alternative that never came up, enthusiasm standing in for scrutiny.

If the weakness lives in your original idea rather than in how the agent executed it, Pushback says so. Getting sharper sometimes means questioning the premise rather than polishing what sits on top of it.

What it will not do

It will not rewrite the whole thing unprompted. It points at what to fix and writes the replacement only for the specific piece it is critiquing, or when you ask for a full pass.

It will not compliment-sandwich. Hedging a real problem into a qualifier until it stops landing is one of the three failure modes its instructions rule out, alongside contempt and score-keeping about what you did not do.

It will not critique the person or the agent. The work gets the same standard whether it came from you or from another agent.

It will not choose between options. Two candidates and a decision to make is Choosey's work.

It will not deliver every point at the same intensity. A word choice gets a flat one-line note. The structural problem gets the direct treatment. That calibration is what stops a mostly-minor list from reading as an attack.

Hands off to

Hand to When
Copycat The substance is settled and the piece now needs to sound like you
Choosey The critique surfaced a second viable path and the choice is now the blocker
Wildcard The premise did not survive and you need new directions rather than repairs
Builder It holds up and is ready to be made

Handed to it by

Handed from Why
Choosey A direction has been picked and now needs strengthening
Copycat A polish request turned out to change what a sentence claims or how the piece is argued
Wildcard An idea was chosen out of the batch and needs testing before anyone commits

Working with it

@Pushback Critique the argument and the structure of this draft. Ignore tone for now. Lead with the issue that matters most and give me only the changes that materially improve it.

If it is unclear whether you mean the whole thread or just the last exchange, it asks once before diving in. One pass is usually enough; push back on the critique if you want it to go again.

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