--- name: hard-cheese description: This skill should be used when the user wants a metacognitive vibecheck gate before code is shared for review or a pull request is opened — phrases like "/hard-cheese", "/cheese --hard", "gate this before I push", "vibecheck me", "make sure I understand this diff", "epistemic-debt check". Reads the working diff, asks the human author to explain its causal logic in their own words, spawns a fresh-context judge sub-agent to grade the explanation against the SOLO Taxonomy (pass ≥ Multistructural), and either accepts (PASS) or returns Socratic feedback for retry (FAIL, capped at `--socratic-cap N`). Writes the audit trail to `.cheese/hard/.md`. Use standalone before opening a PR, or as the propagated `--hard` flag on `/cook`, `/press`, `/age`, `/cure` so the gate fires at the share-for-review handoff. Do NOT use for code review (`/age`), test hardening (`/press`), or fix application (`/cure`) — those review the artifact; hard-cheese reviews the human's understanding of it. license: MIT --- # /hard-cheese Use this skill when the human author needs to demonstrate they understand the causal logic of a diff before it is shared for review or a pull request is opened. The gate exists to mitigate **epistemic debt** — the failure mode where AI-scaffolded code passes review, type-checks, and tests green while the author cannot explain it to a reviewer. Do not use it for code review (`/age` covers eight orthogonal review dimensions), for test hardening (`/press`), or for fix application (`/cure`). Those skills review the artifact. Hard-cheese reviews the human's understanding of the artifact — orthogonal axis. ## Inputs ```text /hard-cheese [] [--socratic-cap N=3] [--no-judge] ``` Arguments: - `` — optional. Identifies the artifact at `.cheese/hard/.md`. When omitted, fall back to the git short SHA of `HEAD`. An explicit slug always wins. - `--socratic-cap N` — max retry attempts before the gate marks the artifact `FAILED` and exits non-zero. Default `3`. Vibecheck does not cap; easy-cheese does to avoid infinite loops. - `--no-judge` — log-only mode. Capture the user's explanation, write the artifact with `status: LOGGED`, skip the judge sub-agent spawn. Mirrors vibecheck's optional JSONL telemetry mode. ## Invocation modes | Mode | How it fires | Where the gate sits | | --- | --- | --- | | **standalone** | User runs `/hard-cheese ` directly before opening a pull request. | Outside the pipeline. No upstream skill required. | | **propagated** | `/cure` invokes `/hard-cheese ` when `--hard` is in scope and the user selects the share-for-review option at cure's handoff (or, under `--auto --hard`, at the end of cure's final auto pass). | At the `cure → share for review` boundary — the moment code escapes the local machine. | `--hard` propagates through `/cheese → /mold → /cook → /press → /age → /cure`. Upstream skills only pass the flag along; `/cure` is the only skill that actually invokes `/hard-cheese`. See `references/composition.md` for the full matrix. ## Flow 1. **Resolve scope.** - `diff_base = origin/main`, `diff_head = `. - If `.cheese/specs/.md` exists, load it as the intent reference (optional — diff is the ground truth). - Slug fallback when none supplied: the HEAD short SHA. - If the working tree has no diff against `origin/main`, exit `0` with `"nothing to gate on"` and write no artifact. 2. **Freshness check.** - If `.cheese/hard/.md` exists and its `diff_head` matches the current HEAD short SHA, print `"previously passed at attempt "` and exit `0`. - If the artifact exists but `diff_head` differs (or `status` is not `PASS`/`LOGGED`), start a fresh attempt sequence. Prior attempts are *not* erased — they stay in the same file as historical context, and the new sequence appends below. 3. **Compose the vibecheck prompt** (faithful to Sankaranarayanan 2026, generalised to "share for review" so the gate stays implementation-agnostic): > Before this is shared for review, explain its causal logic in your own words. How does ** work? Why does it produce the desired behavior? What state, control flow, or invariants does it rely on? Render a diff summary alongside the prompt: files changed, key hunks. Cap the diff excerpt at roughly 80 lines so the user can still see what they are explaining without scrolling. The spec excerpt (if loaded) is shown above the diff summary. 4. **Capture the user's explanation** as free text. No coaching, no autosuggest, no example answers — the explanation is the artifact under test. 5. **Spawn the judge sub-agent** in fresh context (same pattern `/ultracook` uses for adversarial review). Same-context self-judging is biased and not useful. The judge: - Reads `references/judge-prompt.md` as its system prompt. - Receives the diff summary, the spec excerpt (if any), and the user's explanation as context. - Returns a JSON object: `{score, level, pass, feedback, socratic_qs}`. See `references/judge-prompt.md` for the full system prompt and output shape. Skip this step when `--no-judge` is set: mark the attempt `status: LOGGED`, write the artifact, exit `0`. 6. **On judge result:** - `score >= 3` → append PASS attempt to artifact, set `status: PASS`, exit `0`. - `score < 3` → append FAIL attempt, render the Socratic questions inline for the user, loop back to step 4 if `attempts < --socratic-cap`. - Judge error (crash, timeout, malformed output) → append ERROR attempt, print a clear warning, exit `0` (FAIL OPEN — see `## Divergence from the paper`). 7. **On cap exhaustion:** set the artifact `status: FAILED`, print the path, exit non-zero. Downstream chains must not proceed. ## Artifact `.cheese/hard/.md` is the audit trail. The directory is gitignored by repo convention (`.gitignore` already ignores `.cheese/`), so the trail stays local — matching vibecheck's local-only stance on telemetry. ```markdown --- slug: attribution: | Sankaranarayanan, S. (2026). Mitigating 'Epistemic Debt' in Generative AI-Scaffolded Novice Programming using Metacognitive Scripts. Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Learning at Scale. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20206 Implementation reference: https://github.com/sreecharansankaranarayanan/vibecheck rubric: SOLO Taxonomy (1-5), pass threshold = 3 (Multistructural-or-higher; the paper labels this the 'Relational' pass condition) divergence: fail-open on judge error (vibecheck fails closed) diff_base: diff_head: files_changed: status: PASS | FAIL | FAILED | LOGGED attempts: --- ## Attempt 1 (FAIL — SOLO 2 Unistructural) git: > **Judge feedback**: **Socratic questions**: - - ## Attempt 2 (PASS — SOLO 4 Relational) git: > **Judge feedback**: ``` Attempts append; nothing is overwritten within a single invocation. If a re-invocation finds the artifact stale (HEAD moved), the new attempt sequence is appended *below* the prior one rather than replacing it — the trail is cumulative. ## Sub-agent contract — fresh peer, not diminutive The judge is a fresh-context full-peer sub-agent, the same pattern `/ultracook` uses. Rules: - **Fresh context, every invocation.** Same-context judging is biased toward "yes you understand it" because the model that helped write the code believes the code is good. The fresh context is the entire reason the judge means anything. - **`subagent_type: "general-purpose"`** with `references/judge-prompt.md` as the system prompt. Model inherits from the parent — do not pass `haiku` or any other tier downgrade. - **No tools needed for the judge.** It reads the prompt, diff summary, spec excerpt, and explanation, then returns JSON. No file access, no shell, no MCP — the judge is a graded read-only call. - **JSON output is parsed.** If parsing fails, the attempt is logged as `ERROR` and the gate fails open (see `## Divergence from the paper`). If the host harness has no sub-agent primitive, `/hard-cheese` is the wrong skill — the gate cannot run without a fresh judge. Recommend `/hard-cheese --no-judge` for users who still want the explanation captured as telemetry without the grading step. ## Attribution This skill implements the metacognitive-script mechanism described in: > Sankaranarayanan, S. (2026). *Mitigating 'Epistemic Debt' in Generative AI-Scaffolded Novice Programming using Metacognitive Scripts.* Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Learning at Scale. The implementation reference (intercept-at-acceptance, SOLO rubric, Socratic retry) is the open-source VS Code extension by the paper's author: The attribution appears in this `SKILL.md`, in `references/judge-prompt.md`, and in every `.cheese/hard/.md` artifact's frontmatter so the citation travels with the audit trail. ## Divergence from the paper Hard-cheese departs from vibecheck in exactly one place, and the divergence is called out explicitly so it stays legible: **Vibecheck fails closed on judge error.** If the Judge LLM cannot produce a verdict, the modal blocks code application until the judge recovers or the user retries with a different model. **Hard-cheese fails open on judge error.** If the fresh-context judge sub-agent crashes, times out, or returns malformed JSON, the gate writes an `ERROR` attempt, prints a clear warning, and exits `0` — the user is allowed to proceed. Rationale: judge invocation is per-PR-attempt and per-retry, and a strict fail-closed policy creates a worse experience under API hiccups than the epistemic-debt cost it averts. This is the only departure from the paper's mechanism. New divergences must be added to this section so each one stays legible. ## Composition with `--auto` `--hard` and `--auto` may coexist. The gate is the **only** point at which `--hard` punctures `--auto`. Everywhere else, auto's skip-handoff semantics apply. Concretely, under `/cure --auto --hard --stake medium+`: - The pipeline runs auto through `cook → press → age → cure` per `--auto`'s normal contract. - At the end of cure's final auto pass, the chain pauses and `/hard-cheese ` fires once. - The user must respond to the vibecheck prompt. The judge grades. - On PASS: chain exits with `"gate passed → ready to share for review"`. - On FAILED (cap exhausted): chain exits non-zero with the artifact path; the user must improve their understanding before sharing. - On ERROR: chain exits `0` with a warning (the fail-open divergence). Non-TTY guard: if the gate detects it is running without a human (no interactive input is available), it fails closed and aborts. A vacuous "auto-pass" with no human in the loop would defeat the entire mechanism. `/cure --auto` alone (no `--hard`) is unchanged — the gate never fires. The single puncture point is documented in `references/composition.md` and in `skills/cure/SKILL.md`. ## Output When the gate ends, print: ``` Hard-cheese artifact: .cheese/hard/.md Status: PASS | FAILED | LOGGED | ERROR Attempts: ``` Followed by: - On PASS: `Ready to share for review.` - On FAILED: `Cap exhausted. Improve understanding of the change before sharing.` - On LOGGED: `Telemetry only — judge skipped via --no-judge.` - On ERROR: a one-line warning naming the failure mode and `Fail-open divergence active — gate exited 0; you may share for review at your discretion.` ## Preferred tools and fallbacks | Need | Prefer | Fallback | | --- | --- | --- | | Diff inspection for the user-facing summary | `delta` | `git diff --unified=3` | | Reading the spec (when present) | `cheez-read` | host file read | | Spawning the judge | host sub-agent primitive (`Agent()` or harness equivalent) | none — without sub-agent spawn, run `--no-judge` mode and tell the user the judge is unavailable | | GitHub / PR context (out of scope here) | n/a | n/a | ## Rules - The judge sub-agent runs in fresh context. Do not let the same conversation that wrote the code grade the human's understanding of it. - Do not coach the user before they answer. The explanation is the artifact under test. Socratic questions appear only *after* a FAIL, and only the questions returned by the judge — no extra hints from the parent. - Do not paraphrase the user's explanation before passing it to the judge. The judge grades what the user wrote, verbatim. - Do not skip the freshness check. Re-invoking after HEAD has moved must trigger a fresh attempt sequence — prior comprehension is stale once the code changes. - Do not silently drop ERROR attempts. The fail-open divergence requires that every judge failure is recorded in the artifact and surfaced to the user as a warning. - Do not invoke `/gh` or any specific PR-creation tool. The gate's contract is "before code is shared for review" — implementation-agnostic. - Apply the shared voice kernel (lives at `skills/age/references/voice.md` in this repo): say what the gate result was, flag residual risk as `certain | speculating | don't know`, do not soften FAILED into "almost passing". ## References - `references/judge-prompt.md` — SOLO Taxonomy rubric, judge sub-agent system prompt, JSON output shape. - `references/composition.md` — the full `--hard` / `--auto` matrix and the single puncture point.