---
name: surface-rare-findings
description: Test consequential research, audits, strategy, architecture, product or creative reviews, investigations, and implementation for genuinely rare, decision-changing discoveries or unusually high-leverage proposals. Use when the user asks for a rare finding, gold drop, hidden breakthrough, surprising opportunity, or deep anomaly check, and when important evidence exposes an overlooked contradiction, constraint, pattern, or opportunity that could materially alter the outcome. Do not use for routine tasks or to manufacture novelty.
---

# Surface Rare Findings

Run a quiet, high-precision search for discoveries or proposals that could materially change the work. Preserve the primary task. Treat no result as normal.

## Core Contract

- Use rarity as an evidence standard, not a writing style.
- Set no quota. Most tasks should produce no rare finding.
- Distinguish `RARE FINDING` from `RARE PROPOSAL`.
- Keep routine observations, known best practices, and merely severe issues in the normal report.
- Never distort, delay, or broaden the requested work just to search for rarity.

## Evaluate Candidates

First identify the current decision, expected baseline, and evidence available. Look for candidates in:

- contradictions between sources, behavior, and stated assumptions;
- independent signals that converge unexpectedly;
- an overlooked constraint or capability that changes what is possible;
- a second-order implication with disproportionate leverage;
- an anomaly that survives ordinary explanations;
- a simpler framing that invalidates a major part of the current approach.

Test each candidate against every gate:

1. **Surprise:** It meaningfully violates a reasonable baseline, not just the user's awareness.
2. **Materiality:** It would change a decision, strategy, architecture, risk posture, cost, creative direction, or next move.
3. **Evidence:** A finding has direct primary proof or multiple genuinely independent signals. Repeated claims derived from one upstream source count once.
4. **Disconfirmation:** Actively test the strongest ordinary explanation, conflicting evidence, and likely measurement or interpretation error.
5. **Actionability:** State what should change because of it without exceeding the user's authorization.

Reject the rare label if any gate fails.

## Classify Precisely

Use `RARE FINDING` only for a factual discovery that passes every gate.

Use `RARE PROPOSAL` for an unusually high-leverage idea grounded in the evidence but not yet proven. Label the key assumption and the cheapest decisive test.

Use `RARE CANDIDATE` only when the potential consequence is large but decisive evidence is missing. Report it only when the user explicitly requested a rare-finding check or when the missing validation must affect the current decision.

Do not convert speculation into a finding. Do not convert importance, severity, novelty, or confidence alone into rarity.

## Report Sparingly

When the skill triggers implicitly and nothing passes, say nothing about the check.

When the user explicitly requests the check and nothing passes, report one line:

`Rare finding check: none met the threshold.`

When something passes, report at most the strongest one unless multiple findings are independently decisive:

### RARE FINDING

- **Finding:** State the discovery in one precise sentence.
- **Why it is rare:** Name the reasonable baseline it overturns.
- **Evidence:** Give direct, inspectable support and distinguish verified facts from inference.
- **Disconfirmation attempted:** State the strongest alternative checked and its result.
- **Consequence:** Explain the decision or outcome this changes.
- **Recommended move:** Give the highest-value next action within scope.
- **Confidence:** High or medium, with the limiting uncertainty.

For a proposal, replace **Finding** with **Proposal** and add:

- **Key assumption:** State what remains unproven.
- **Decisive test:** Give the cheapest credible way to validate it.

Keep the language calm and concrete. The evidence and consequence create the gold-drop effect; typography and hype do not.

## Preserve Execution

If a rare result appears during authorized implementation, incorporate it immediately when the adjustment is low-risk, reversible, and within scope. Pause for the user only when it materially changes product direction or taste, creates external or irreversible consequences, requires new authorization, or makes continued implementation wasteful.