basecamp/house-skills/consult-outside-expert

consult-outside-expert

Activation gate

This is a heavyweight, explicit-opt-in workflow. Apply this gate before opening any reference, creating a review log, or contacting another agent.

Activate only when the current user request directly asks to run this consultation, or uses the skill's canonical host invocation: $consult-outside-expert in Codex, /dev:consult-outside-expert from this Claude Code plugin, or /consult-outside-expert when installed as a standalone Claude Code skill. An imperative request to ask an independent outside expert or agent for a second opinion also qualifies.

Do not activate when:

• The user merely names, quotes, discusses, audits, or configures this skill.
• The user asks the current agent for ordinary review, feedback, validation, planning,

or an opinion without explicitly requesting another independent reviewer.

• A message is only a status update or follow-up from a completed consultation and does

not explicitly request another review round.

• ralph-lisa-loop is active. That workflow owns its external-review channel; do not

nest this skill unless the user explicitly asks for a separate consultation as well.

An already-running consultation is exempt. If review-log.md or review-session.md exists for the current consultation, it was already explicitly started, so continue it when the user supplies a requested mediator decision or asks to resume. A reply such as "Option A" after a decision-point prompt applies that decision and continues the existing session; the explicit-opt-in requirement governs initial activation, not continuation.

If the gate fails, answer normally and stop. Do not open the guide, spawn an expert, or create consultation artifacts.

Protocol

Open @references/guide.md and follow it. Do not proceed without it.

When the activation gate passes, consult an outside expert to collaboratively refine work through iterative back-and-forth. It supports:

• Fresh perspective on your work
• Stress-testing from a different angle
• Steelmanning of ideas
• Progressive convergence on optimal outcomes

The guide contains:

• The consultation loop and mediator role
• Round templates and expert prompts
• Convergence gates and quality criteria
• Eval checks and failure modes
• Working log templates (manual + Codex session modes)