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Bake-off Decision Skill

Develops competing solutions to a defined brief, judges them, and synthesizes a verified winner

Source Download skill
Repository
EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
Stars
25,850
Licence
MIT
Files
5 files

What it does

When you have a defined goal but only rough options, this skill makes the agent write several independent candidate approaches, have a separate judging step compare them against shared criteria, and then combine the strongest parts into one recommended approach that is checked against the brief. The output is a design-level artifact such as an approach brief or architecture sketch, not working code, and it reports which candidates were rejected and why. It is meant for choices where exploring alternatives before committing is worth the extra cost.

Great for

  • Teams choosing between architectural or product approaches before committing to build
  • Developers who want a structured comparison of several designs for a feature or bug fix
  • People who want a documented decision record showing alternatives considered

Skip it if

  • Routine choices, since the skill itself says not to turn a simple decision into a competition; it spends multiple agent runs and tokens
  • Decisions that need runtime measurement or hands-on experience; the skill defers those to other tools such as ce-optimize or ce-prototype and only lists the evidence needed
  • Settled decisions or unsettled product goals, which the skill says should be routed to other skills instead

Try asking

  • “Run a bake-off on how to structure the caching layer for our reporting service, with the brief I've written”
  • “Compare three rough onboarding flow ideas and synthesize the strongest one”
  • “Explore competing approaches to migrating our auth module and tell me what evidence is still missing”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Bake-off Decision SkillInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 5 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    ce-bakeoff.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip ce-bakeoff.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip ce-bakeoff.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Write a clear brief with goal, constraints and criteria before invoking it, since candidates receive the same requirements
  • Use it only for choices where alternatives genuinely matter; for open opportunities try ce-ideate, and for judging developed options try ce-pov
  • Ask for the evidence-needs list and follow up with experiments for any runtime claims the sketches cannot prove

What's inside

  • references/candidates.md
  • references/judging.md
  • references/output.md
  • references/verification.md
  • SKILL.md

Redistributed unmodified from EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.