--- name: security-technical-decision-explainer description: "Translates a single security architecture decision into three audience-tuned explanations — engineer, PM, and executive — plus a one-line summary, a decision record, and an anticipated-objections table, without oversimplifying the technical substance. Use when explaining a security tradeoff, defending an architecture choice to leadership, writing an ADR for a control, or aligning stakeholders on a risk decision." argument-hint: "[decision] [audiences]" allowed-tools: ["Read"] --- # Security Technical Decision Explainer ## Purpose Take one complex security architecture decision and produce parallel explanations calibrated for engineers, product managers, and executives — each accurate, each in that audience's language and decision frame — so the security engineer can communicate the same choice across the org without repeating the analysis or losing rigor for any group. ## When to Use Invoke this skill when the user asks to: - Explain a security architecture decision to engineers, PMs, and executives at once - Justify a security tradeoff (e.g., cost, latency, UX friction) to non-technical stakeholders - Write an architecture decision record (ADR) or security decision brief for a control or design - Prepare for a review where they'll defend a chosen approach against alternatives - Communicate a risk-acceptance or risk-mitigation choice to leadership - Translate a technical finding or remediation plan into business terms without softening the facts ## Inputs Required Before starting, collect: - **The decision**: What was chosen or is being proposed (e.g., "adopt mTLS for service-to-service auth," "accept the risk of the unpatched legacy dependency for Q3") - **The alternatives considered**: The other options on the table and why they were passed over - **The driving problem/risk**: The threat, gap, or requirement forcing the decision - **Key tradeoffs**: Cost, latency, complexity, developer friction, timeline, or UX impact accepted - **Target audiences**: Which of engineer / PM / executive to produce (default: all three) - **Stakes & context**: Compliance driver, incident history, or deadline shaping the decision - **Known objections**: Any pushback already heard or expected from specific stakeholders If alternatives or objections aren't provided, infer the most plausible ones from the decision and flag them as assumptions. ## Instructions ### Step 1: Extract the Decision Core Before writing for any audience, state internally the invariant facts that must survive every translation: - **The choice**: One sentence, no jargon-free rewording yet - **The problem it solves**: The specific risk or requirement - **The primary tradeoff**: The single most important thing being accepted - **The reversibility**: Is this a one-way door or easily changed later? These facts must be consistent across all three explanations — only framing changes, never substance. ### Step 2: Engineer Explanation Audience frame: *How does this work, and will it make my life harder?* - Lead with the mechanism — the actual control, protocol, or pattern - Name the alternatives and give the concrete technical reason each was rejected (performance, blast radius, maintainability, standard-of-practice) - State the operational impact: what changes in their workflow, deploys, debugging, or on-call - Include the threat model in precise terms — what attacker capability this defends against and what it explicitly does not - Be specific about numbers where they exist (latency added, key rotation cadence, coverage gaps) - Length: 120–180 words ### Step 3: PM Explanation Audience frame: *What does this cost my roadmap, and what do I tell my stakeholders?* - Lead with the impact on delivery: timeline, dependencies, and any feature or UX friction introduced - Translate the risk into user/product terms — what a failure would mean for customers or the product - State the tradeoff as a scoped decision, not an open-ended cost ("adds one sprint now, avoids a likely emergency later") - Give them a defensible one-liner they can repeat to their own stakeholders - Avoid protocol names unless you immediately define the consequence; keep the threat model at the "what could go wrong for the product" level - Length: 100–150 words ### Step 4: Executive Explanation Audience frame: *What's the business risk, what's it cost, and do I need to act?* - Lead with the risk-and-decision in one line: what's at stake and what was decided - Frame in terms of exposure, cost, compliance, and reputational/financial consequence — not mechanism - State the tradeoff as a business judgment with a clear recommendation and confidence level - Make the ask explicit: informational, or does it need a decision/budget/sign-off? - Zero jargon — if a security term is unavoidable, replace it with its business meaning - Length: 60–100 words ### Step 5: Decision Record & Objections Produce two supporting artifacts: - **One-line summary**: A single sentence usable as a Slack message or email subject - **Decision record (ADR-lite)**: Context → Decision → Alternatives rejected → Consequences → Status - **Anticipated objections table**: 3–5 likely pushbacks, the audience each comes from, and a direct, honest response for each (do not dismiss valid objections — concede where warranted) ## Output Format - **Structure**: Decision core → three audience explanations (clearly labeled) → one-line summary → ADR-lite → objections table - **Length**: 700–1,000 words total - **Format**: Labeled prose sections for the explanations; structured fields for the ADR; a table for objections - **Sections**: Decision Core → For Engineers → For PMs → For Executives → One-Line Summary → Decision Record → Anticipated Objections - **Tone**: Precise and non-condescending — each audience gets full respect; no group is talked down to, none is buried in jargon ## Quality Checklist Before delivering output, verify: - [ ] All three audience explanations describe the same decision with no contradictory facts - [ ] The engineer version names alternatives with concrete technical rejection reasons - [ ] The executive version contains zero undefined security jargon and states an explicit ask - [ ] Each explanation stays within its word-count band and leads with that audience's core question - [ ] The objections table has 3–5 rows, each tagged to an audience with an honest (not dismissive) response - [ ] The ADR-lite includes all five fields (Context, Decision, Alternatives, Consequences, Status) ## Notes - The failure mode to avoid is a "dumbed-down" executive version that hides the real tradeoff — executives make worse decisions when consequences are softened. Simplify the language, never the stakes. - When a decision is a one-way door (hard to reverse), flag reversibility explicitly in all three versions — it changes how urgently each audience should engage. - If objections reveal the decision is actually contested rather than settled, say so; this skill explains decisions, it doesn't manufacture false consensus. --- ## How to use this skill This file is a Claude Code skill in [Anthropic's standard format](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills) — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top. **Installing in Claude Code:** - `~/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads in every session anywhere on your machine (recommended for skills you'll use across multiple projects) - `/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads only when working in that project (recommended for project-specific skills) Restart Claude Code or open a new session to register. **Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:** 1. 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