# Adversarial Consulting Pattern

Two-turn technique for higher-quality analysis from Claude Opus. Proven effective for architecture decisions, prompt engineering, and design trade-offs.

## Pattern

**Turn 1:** Ask for advice on the problem. Frame it neutrally — "I need your advice on X."

**Turn 2:** Ask Claude to play devil's advocate against its own Turn 1 advice. Require web searches to ground the pushback. Frame: "Push back on your own advice. Do web searches first. Be genuinely adversarial — if your previous answer was wrong, say so."

## Why It Works

- Claude's first answer is often confident but incomplete — it picks a position and argues for it
- The adversarial prompt forces it to find counter-evidence via web search, surfacing trade-offs it glossed over
- The second turn often partially reverses or qualifies the first, producing a more nuanced final position
- Web search requirement prevents it from just inventing counter-arguments — they must be grounded

## When To Use

- Architecture decisions with real trade-offs
- Prompt engineering (where to place rules, how to structure instructions)
- Security/design reviews
- Any decision where the first answer felt too clean

## When NOT To Use

- Simple factual questions (one turn is enough)
- Time-sensitive queries where the extra turn isn't worth it
- When Claude's first answer already acknowledged uncertainty and trade-offs

## Example Session

Session from 2026-07-02: "Where to add global conciseness instructions to reduce token use?"

Turn 1: Claude recommended SOUL.md edit, argued token math favored it.
Turn 2 (adversarial): Claude partially reversed on token math (user has local Ollama, no per-token pricing), conceded the 14-profile symlink risk, acknowledged compression threshold concern, and revised to: SOUL.md edit + SOUL_OVERRIDE.md mechanism + measurement.

The adversarial turn produced a materially better recommendation than the first pass.