Reckon: Make AI Attack Your Spec, Not Flatter It

Reckon first asks: "Before I show you anything: in your own words, what do you think works about this spec, and what worries you most?" After you answer, it runs the isolated praise and critic reviews and returns:

Reckoning Verdict — forge-pulse-fast-feedback-team-heartbeat (v1)

⚖️ Verdict: DESCOPE

3 critical failure mode(s) and 3 weak market verdict(s) — fix before building.

✅ Strengths

• Problem statement is empirically grounded with converging evidence from multiple independent sources [strong] · 🔒 DO NOT REGRESS — §problem
  The convergence of independent evidence makes the problem undeniable.
• Quantitative baselines establish clear improvement targets [strong] · 🔒 DO NOT REGRESS — §problem
  Specific baselines enable falsifiable hypotheses.
• Personas are dimensioned with empirical behavioral data rather than fictional archetypes [strong] · 🔒 DO NOT REGRESS — §personas
  Empirically-grounded personas create actionable design constraints.

💡 Non-obvious insights

• Leading indicators are distinguished from lagging outcomes — §success_metrics
  The success metrics section doesn't just list goals—it identifies early signals that predict long-term success.
• Anonymity implementation recognizes tradeoff between perfect privacy and vote integrity — §technical_considerations
  The technical section explicitly states: 'Risk: Systems that don't track who is voting create possibility for voting abuse.'

🔴 Failure modes (by severity)

• [critical/high] Anonymous Voting Manipulation Will Destroy Trust in First Real Incident (failure_modes · §technical_considerations)
  Without cryptographic vote prevention (finding-014 shows one-time ring signatures required), first time someone stuffs votes with 20+ upvotes on their own note, entire team loses faith in anonymity system.
• [critical/high] 1-2 Month Timeline With WebSocket, Real-Time Collaboration, and GDPR Compliance Is Fantasy (failure_modes · §scope)
  Finding-020 shows simple products take 1-3 months, real-time features add 2-3 weeks.
• [critical/medium] Permanent Anonymity Prevents You From Moderating Harassment or Malicious Content (failure_modes · §technical_considerations)
  Technical section acknowledges 'permanent anonymity creates forensic challenge if malicious content posted.' First time someone posts 'Sarah is incompetent and should be fired' in anonymous note, you have zero recourse.

🧭 Market skeptic

Why care? [moderate] The pain is real (40-50% action completion, recurring themes, psychological safety barriers) but the willingness to pay is questionable.

• Why now? [weak] The PRD provides no 'why now' argument.
• Why win? [weak] Differentiation is Heartbeat Timeline + permanent anonymity + auto-carry actions.
• Feature or product? [weak] This is a feature bundle that any existing retro tool could add in 4-8 weeks.

📋 Overall

This PRD exhibits three fatal flaws: (1) Solving symptom (low action completion) not cause (no organizational accountability culture), (2) Technical complexity (anonymous voting cryptography, WebSocket scaling, GDPR compliance) vastly underestimated relative to 1-2 month timeline, (3) Zero defensible moat against 10+ free competitors who can copy all features in 6-12 weeks.

Critic confidence: 0.88 · Praise confidence: 0.92

Then Reckon adds a short cognitive-forcing diff of your answer against these findings.

Condensed for this listing: top strengths and critical failure modes only, with detail trimmed to the first sentence. The full verdict is in examples/expected-verdict.md inside the skill.