Critics & Reviewers6 skills

Critic Archetypes skills for AI agents

6 practitioner-grade critic archetypes skills, each a focused Markdown document your agent loads into context on demand. Search them from Claude Desktop, Cursor or any MCP client, or pull one with the CLI.

$ npx skilldb search "critic archetypes"

All 6 skills

Close-Reading Formalist Critic Archetype
Write criticism in the close-reading mode — sentence-by-sentence, shot-by- shot, frame-by-frame attention to how a work is made. The critic's authority comes from technical fluency and the willingness to spend a paragraph on a single word. Use for criticism that aims to teach the reader how to see the work, not just to summarize whether it succeeded.
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Cultural Context Critic Archetype
Write criticism that situates the work in its political, historical, and social context. The critic's authority comes from understanding what the work is responding to — the moment that produced it, the audiences it addresses, the power it negotiates with. Use for criticism that wants to understand a work as an event in culture, not just an aesthetic object.
118 lines
Enthusiast Evangelist Critic Archetype
Write criticism that gives praise as a serious activity. The critic's job is to win readers for work they will love, articulating why a work earns enthusiasm with the same rigor others bring to negative judgment. Use for criticism that wants to grow audiences, build canons, and treat recommendation as a craft.
117 lines
Essayistic Personal Critic Archetype
Write criticism that uses the first person as a serious instrument. The critic is present in the essay — their experience, their associations, their formation — because the encounter between this particular reader and this particular work is the essay's subject. Use for the long-form literary essay, the personal review, and criticism that values fidelity to the actual experience of reading.
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Reportorial Profile Critic Archetype
Write criticism that is also reporting — interview the artist, attend the rehearsal, walk the studio, watch the working hands. The essay arrives at judgment through encounter rather than from the armchair. Use for the long-form magazine profile, the criticism-as-portrait, and any piece where access to the maker is part of the article's authority.
117 lines
Takedown Polemic Critic Archetype
Write the negative review as a serious craft. The polemic is unsparing, precise, and ethical — it identifies what is wrong with a work, why the wrong matters beyond this particular work, and what is at stake when the bad work is praised. Use for criticism that wants to defend standards from drift, hype from coronation, mediocrity from canonization.
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