Adversarial Review
Reasoning
Level 2 · Advanced reasoningHave the model critique the answer as a skeptical third party looking for flaws, not as the author defending it.
Adversarial Review asks the model to review an already-written draft from the posture of a skeptical outside critic actively hunting for weaknesses, rather than the posture of an author revising their own work. This produces a noticeably harsher, more useful read than Self-Critique/Refine's own review step: an author reviewing their own draft is 'attached' to it in a way a hostile external critic isn't, and tends to miss the same blind spots that produced the draft in the first place. Distinct from Failure Mode Analysis: this technique critiques a draft that already exists, while Failure Mode Analysis enumerates risks to a plan before any draft has been written — a target difference (existing output vs. a plan not yet executed), not just a difference in tone.
When to use it
Use it when you specifically want to stress-test an already-written draft, not just polish it.
When to avoid it
Avoid it for creative or exploratory work still in an early stage — a hostile review this early can discourage a promising but unfinished idea rather than improve it.
Advantages
- Produces sharper, less self-forgiving feedback than a same-author revision pass
- Good at catching the exact blind spot that produced the draft in the first place
Disadvantages
- Can feel unnecessarily harsh for work still meant to be exploratory
- The 'critic' persona can occasionally manufacture objections just to have something to say
Examples
Draft: [a project proposal recommending migrating the whole backend to a new database in a single release] Review this as a skeptical critic actively looking for weaknesses. Identify the strongest objections a critic would raise.
Try it
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