There are two ways to fail at critique. Strawman: attack a weak version of the idea, win cheaply, and miss what's actually wrong. Rubber-stamp: wave it through to be agreeable. Both leave the real flaw standing. The fix is the same move: build the steelman — the strongest, most charitable version the proposer would endorse — and then critique that.
Steelman Then Critique 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/steelman-then-critique/ and loads when your prompt matches the skill's trigger.
When to invoke it: Use when critiquing a proposal, design, or argument. First state its strongest form — the best honest case for it — then critique that, so the critique actually lands instead of knocking down a weak version or rubber-stamping a flawed one.
The Steelman Then Critique 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 196,000+ SKILL.md files for Anthropic's Claude Code agent and the wider Claude ecosystem (Claude API, Claude Agent SDK).
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/steelman-then-critique curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/steelman-then-critique/SKILL.md \ -o ~/.claude/skills/steelman-then-critique/SKILL.md
Or just download SKILL.md directly and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/steelman-then-critique/. Claude Code auto-discovers it on next session.
Skills live at ~/.claude/skills/steelman-then-critique/SKILL.md on macOS/Linux, or %USERPROFILE%\.claude\skills\steelman-then-critique\SKILL.md on Windows. See the full install guide for step-by-step instructions.
Open @claudskills_bot on Telegram, tap Open Desktop App, and the desktop app installs this skill for you. Or share the bot link with a colleague — they get the same one-tap install. Learn more →
The ClaudSkills desktop app installs any skill directly into ~/.claude/skills/ with one click — no terminal required. Pro starts at $9/mo or $149 lifetime.
For the full experience including quality scoring and one-click install features for each skill — upgrade to Pro.
SKILL.md from the source repository to ~/.claude/skills/steelman-then-critique/SKILL.md and restart Claude Code. Both flows are detailed at claudskills.com/install/.SKILL.md file that lives under ~/.claude/skills/<name>/ and tells the Claude Code CLI agent how to perform a specific task (instructions, prompts, allowed tools). Skills are auto-discovered at session start. Steelman Then Critique is one of 67,000+ skills indexed in the open ClaudSkills catalog, classified under the General category. Learn more at /learn/what-is-a-claude-skill/.If you reference this skill in a blog post, paper, or documentation, you can cite it as:
@misc{steelman-then-critique-2026,
author = {selamy-labs},
title = {Steelman Then Critique [Claude Code skill]},
year = {2026},
publisher = {ClaudSkills},
url = {https://claudskills.com/skills/steelman-then-critique/}
}Grade A · scanned 2026-09-28 — free static scan against the OWASP Agentic Skills Top 10.
No risk patterns were found in any of the ten OWASP-aligned categories. How grading works ›
Browse all General skills in the ClaudSkills registry, or explore these other picks from the same category:
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SKILL.md files, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic.