Deep QA Skill

Systematically audit an existing artifact for defects using parallel critic agents across QA dimensions tailored to the artifact type. Unlike deep-design (which designs and iterates) or deep-research (which explores the web), deep-qa takes an artifact as-is and finds what's wrong with it.

No spec drafting. No redesign. Find and report.

Execution Model

Pressure awareness: this skill applies the pressure circuit breakers from _shared/pressure-awareness.md. After each critic round, check for diminishing returns (round N < 20% of round N-1 findings → eligible for early termination). After 3 rounds with < 20% new findings, stop rather than grinding.

Shares deep-design's core execution contracts:

• All data passed to agents via files, never inline. Artifact, known-defects list, angle definitions — all written to disk before spawning.
• State written before agent spawn, not after. spawn_time_iso written before Agent tool call. Spawn failure records spawn_failed status.
• Structured output is the contract; free-text is ignored. Severity judges produce machine-parseable structured lines. Unparseable output → fail-safe critical.
• No coordinator self-review of anything load-bearing. Severity classification delegated to independent judge agents.
• Termination labels are honest. Seven defined labels map to all reachable termination paths — never "no defects remain." See Phase 5 for the complete vocabulary.
• Hard stop is unconditional. hard_stop = max_rounds * 2 is set at initialization and checked at the start of every round before any user prompt. No extension can exceed it.