| name | grilling |
| description | Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea — one question at a time — until shared understanding is reached. Use when the user says "grill me", "stress-test this plan", "interview me about this", "poke holes in this", "challenge my thinking", or before committing to a non-trivial design. |
| license | MIT |
Grilling
The most common failure mode in software work is misalignment: the agent builds
what it thinks was asked. A grilling session closes that gap before any work
starts. Adapted from mattpocock/skills (MIT).
Interview the user relentlessly about every aspect of the plan, decision, or idea
until you reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the decision
tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one by one.
Rules of the session
- One question at a time. Ask a single question, then wait for the answer
before continuing. Asking multiple questions at once is bewildering.
- Recommend an answer with every question. State your recommended answer and
why, so the user can accept it with a single word or push back.
- Facts are yours; decisions are theirs. If a fact can be found by
exploring the environment (filesystem, git history, docs, running commands),
look it up instead of asking. Decisions belong to the user — put each one to
them and wait.
- Resolve dependencies in order. When one decision hinges on another,
surface the upstream decision first.
- Challenge vague terms. When the user uses an overloaded or fuzzy word,
propose a precise one (see
domain-modeling when the vocabulary itself needs
fixing).
- Do not act until confirmed. No edits, no scaffolding, no "getting a head
start". The session ends when the user confirms shared understanding — then
summarize the decisions made and hand off to the appropriate skill
(
workflow-spec-tdd, design-prd, plan-*).
Output
Close the session with a compact decision log: each decision on one line, in the
user's confirmed vocabulary. This log is the input to the spec or plan that
follows — offer to carry it into design-prd or /plan.
