grilling

name	grilling
description	Relentlessly grill plans until shared understanding. Use when stress-testing a design or another skill delegates grilling.

Grilling

Interview relentlessly about every aspect of a plan until shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the decision tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one-by-one. For each question, provide a recommended answer. Ask one question at a time.

Rules

1. One question at a time. Wait for the user's answer before posing the next. Multi-question batches collapse the decision tree into a wall of text.
2. Always recommend. Every question carries your strongest read on the answer + a one-line "why". The user wants a sparring partner, not a menu.
3. Explore before asking. If the answer lives in source, use Read / Grep / Glob before asking. Questions that the codebase already answers waste turns and signal weak prep.
4. Walk dependencies, not breadth. Resolve one branch fully before moving sideways. If Q3's answer makes Q5 moot, kill Q5; if Q3 forks into two new sub-questions, ask the sub-questions before returning to Q4.
5. Push back on weak answers. If the user's answer leaves the design ambiguous or contradicts something earlier, surface the conflict and re-pose. Don't accept "we'll see" — that's a Q for next time, not closure.
6. Stop when the design is operational. "Operational" means a competent contributor could open a PR from the resulting plan without further design questions. Not before, not after.

Interaction shape

Agent: <Q1>. My read: <recommended answer>. Why: <1-line reason>.
User:  <answer / pushback>
Agent: <Q2 — derived from Q1's answer>. My read: …
User:  …
Agent: That closes the design tree for me. Want me to <draft the plan / open a PR / start coding>?

Don't number the questions in chat — the conversation IS the order. Number them only when the user asks for a recap or a written summary.

Codebase-exploration shortcuts

Reach for these before asking the human:

Question shape	Tool
"Where is X defined?" / "Who imports X?"	Grep (symbol / import) · Glob (file paths)
"What does file X export?"	Read the file (after Glob if path unknown)
"What's the type of X?"	Read the file
"What conventions apply to this layer?"	Read the relevant rule under .agents/rules/
"How does the existing similar module do this?"	Grep for the pattern, then Read

Anti-patterns

• ❌ Question dumps. "I have 7 questions about this — (1) …, (2) …, (3) …" — the user can't keep state across 7 branches in one read.
• ❌ Open-ended without a recommendation. "What do you think about X?" — you're the senior here; lead.
• ❌ Asking questions the codebase already answers. "Does this module use useSyncExternalStore?" — Grep first.
• ❌ Refusing to push back when the user says "I dunno". "Don't know" is a signal to recommend harder, not to drop the branch.
• ❌ Ending the session early. If the next contributor would still ask "but what about X?", you stopped too soon.