Winner Stress-Testing

Purpose: Subject the convergence winner to rigorous adversarial pressure, identifying failure modes, hidden assumptions, and boundary conditions that could cause the decision to fail in practice.

When to use:

• After a winner has been selected but before final commitment
• When the decision carries high stakes or irreversibility
• When the winner was selected by narrow margin
• When implementation risk is uncertain

Budget

| Metric | Minimum | |--------|---------| | Attack angles | >= 3 distinct failure vectors | | Assumptions challenged | >= 5 | | Pre-mortem scenarios | >= 3 | | Severity threshold | All HIGH severity findings must be addressed |

State Ledger

yaml
winner: <candidate>
attack_vectors_applied: []
assumptions_found: []
failure_modes: []
severity_ratings: {}
verdict: null  # ACCEPT | REJECT | REVISE
conditions_for_acceptance: []

Available Tactics

| Tactic | When to Deploy | |--------|---------------| | assumption-excavation | Default — extract and challenge winner's assumptions | | adversarial-debate-protocol | When specific weaknesses need formal debate | | multi-perspective-attack | When winner affects multiple stakeholder groups |

Available SOPs

• assumption-extraction — surface hidden assumptions in the winner
• assumption-challenge — attack each assumption
• conclusion-sensitivity — map which assumptions are load-bearing
• critic-attack — direct attack on winner's case
• judge-verdict — render accept/reject/revise

Execution Guidance

1. Deploy assumption-excavation to surface and challenge assumptions
2. Identify critical assumptions from sensitivity map
3. For each critical assumption, assess mitigation feasibility
4. If >= 1 unmitigable critical assumption, verdict is REVISE or REJECT
5. Record all findings in Challenge Ledger

Output Format

yaml
strategy: winner-stress-testing
winner: <candidate>
assumptions_found: <count>
critical_assumptions: <count>
failure_modes:
  - mode: <description>
    severity: HIGH | MEDIUM | LOW
    mitigable: true | false
verdict: ACCEPT | REJECT | REVISE
conditions: []
recommended_modifications: []

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Available Tactics

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

| Tactic | When to use | | --- | --- | | adversarial-debate-protocol | Structured debate protocol that constructs an advocate, deploys critic attacks, and renders a judge verdict through iterative rounds. | | assumption-excavation | Systematic extraction, challenge, and sensitivity analysis of assumptions underlying a decision to identify load-bearing beliefs. | | multi-perspective-attack | Assign distinct perspectives to attack a decision from multiple angles, then synthesize findings into a unified assessment. |

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