Explain a decision to someone who already disagrees with it
Explaining a decision to a skeptic needs to address their actual objection, not just restate your reasoning louder.
- Use it for
- Anyone who needs to explain a decision to someone who's pushed back on it.
Explaining a decision to someone already skeptical of it usually fails because it restates the original reasoning — which the skeptic already heard and wasn't convinced by. Repeating the same argument more thoroughly rarely lands any better the second time. This prompt finds their actual objection first, then builds an explanation aimed specifically at that.
When not to use this
If they haven't raised a specific objection yet, this is premature — find out what they actually disagree with first, then come back to this.
Did this work?
The explanation directly addresses their stated objection, not a restatement of your original reasoning aimed at no one in particular.
Tested on claude-opus-5. Evidence status is draft; it moves to battle-tested only on recorded runs, never by hand.