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Rationalization Trap Check

Category: General  ·  Sub-category: general-misc  ·  Last updated:
type:review
Light heuristic for detecting the rationalization trap — long chain-of-thought preceding a small load-bearing change, especially when the CoT defends a prior decision against fresh evidence. Cites K2 §3.3 (rationalization-trap value-rule, ConflictQA arxiv 2604.11209). The 'no silent rationalization' rule is the sole value-layer 'must' in this plugin. 理性化陷阱檢測：長鏈思考前置於小幅承重變更之啟發式檢核。 Use when: reviewing a long CoT/reasoning trace before a small commit, gating PR descriptions whose 'Why' section dwarfs the diff, auditing brainstorming Phase 1/2 strategy picks that override Phase 0 high-confidence bullets, post-hoc audit of a decision that 'feels off'. Skip when: the CoT is exploratory/throwaway and no commit follows, or the change is large enough that long reasoning is proportionate.

From the source SKILL.md

Light heuristic. Detects when a long chain-of-thought (CoT) precedes a small load-bearing change — the canonical signature of rationalizing a prior decision against fresh contradicting evidence, rather than updating the decision. K2 §3.3 names this an anti-pattern; commit ebd136a made no silent rationalization a value-layer rule (must be visible, not silent). This skill is the consumer-side check.

What this skill does

Rationalization Trap Check is a community-contributed Claude Code skill in the general-misc sub-category. It ships as a SKILL.md file that Claude Code auto-discovers under ~/.claude/skills/rationalization-trap-check/ and loads when your prompt matches the skill's trigger.

When to invoke it: Use when: reviewing a long CoT/reasoning trace before a small commit, gating PR descriptions whose 'Why' section dwarfs the diff, auditing brainstorming Phase 1/2 strategy picks that override Phase 0 high-confidence bullets, post-hoc audit of a decision that 'feels off'. Skip when: the CoT is exploratory/throwaway and no commit follows, or the change is large enough that long reasoning is proportionate.

Who uses this skill

The Rationalization Trap Check Claude Code skill is built for Claude Code users and developers across all disciplines looking for general-purpose AI assistance. It's part of ClaudSkills (also referred to as Claude Skills or Claude Code Skills) — the open community-curated registry of 70,000+ SKILL.md files for Anthropic's Claude Code agent and the wider Claude ecosystem (Claude API, Claude Agent SDK).

How to install

Free

Manual install (2 steps)

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/rationalization-trap-check
curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/rationalization-trap-check/SKILL.md \
  -o ~/.claude/skills/rationalization-trap-check/SKILL.md

Or just download SKILL.md directly and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/rationalization-trap-check/. Claude Code auto-discovers it on next session.

Skills live at ~/.claude/skills/rationalization-trap-check/SKILL.md on macOS/Linux, or %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\rationalization-trap-check\SKILL.md on Windows. See the full install guide for step-by-step instructions.

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Cite this skill

If you reference this skill in a blog post, paper, or documentation, you can cite it as:

APA
ClaudSkills. (2026). Rationalization Trap Check [Claude Code skill]. ClaudSkills. https://claudskills.com/skills/rationalization-trap-check/
BibTeX
@misc{rationalization-trap-check-2026,
  author    = {ClaudSkills},
  title     = {Rationalization Trap Check [Claude Code skill]},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {ClaudSkills},
  url       = {https://claudskills.com/skills/rationalization-trap-check/}
}

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