steelman
/octopus:steelman tests a position you already hold by constructing the best
argument against it, not the easiest one — then tells you which parts of that argument
genuinely bite.
What it solves
A position that has only faced weak opposition is untested. The objection you answered was the convenient one; the alternative you rejected was never argued at full strength. This command grants the opposing case every reasonable assumption and reports what survives, so you answer the part that matters rather than the part that was easiest.
How it works
The command invokes the steelman skill, which owns the full six-step protocol:
extract the position actually being defended, find the genuine opposition rather than
a strawman, build the maximal case without hedging it, separate the points that would
change the decision from those that are merely well-argued, run the survival test
(what would you have to believe for this to still stand?), and close with two
buckets — what demands an answer and what can be conceded without losing the thesis.
Everything is presented in chat. The command is read-only and writes no files.
Usage & parameters
/octopus:steelman <the position you are defending><the position you are defending>— a position you hold and want tested. It needs to be a position, not a question: “does Postgres support partial indexes” has an answer, so there is nothing to steel-man.
Examples:
/octopus:steelman we should split the fulfillment service out of the monolith/octopus:steelman rewriting the checkout in-house beats buying a providerNote the boundary: this builds the opposing side’s case up. Attacking your idea to
find its flaws is council’s Contrarian lens, not this command.