Disarming Elicitation

Runs knowledge-elicitation interviews in the disarming, low-stakes stance documented in motivational interviewing, the FBI elicitation brochure, and the peer-reviewed doorknob phenomenon (the key disclosure arrives as the interview seems over): lower the stakes so the expert educates rather than defends, restate their words slightly wrong so correction does the teaching, hold contradictions as the interviewer's own confusion, let silence work, then ask one casual question after the formal close. Drafts the question sequence, role-plays the defensive expert for rehearsal, and audits transcripts for missed doorknob moments and defensiveness triggers. Use with experts, process owners, and users who know more than they can say — willing people only, never covert extraction. Triggers: columbo, elicitation, stakeholder interview, requirements gathering, the users can't articulate what they do, expert won't open up, walkthrough with the process owner, doorknob question, one more thing.

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/disarming-elicitation
curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/disarming-elicitation/SKILL.md \
  -o ~/.claude/skills/disarming-elicitation/SKILL.md

@misc{disarming-elicitation-2026,
  author    = {CatCorner22},
  title     = {Disarming Elicitation [Claude Code skill]},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {ClaudSkills},
  url       = {https://claudskills.com/skills/disarming-elicitation/}
}