| name | compose:brainstorm |
| description | You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation. |
Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs
Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.
Start by understanding the current project context, then ask questions one at a time to refine the idea. Once you understand what you're building, present the design and get user approval.
Checklist
- Explore project context — check files, docs, recent commits
- Load learnings — read docs/compose/learnings/*.md for non-obvious discoveries
- Ask clarifying questions — one at a time, understand purpose/constraints/success criteria
- Propose 2-3 approaches — with trade-offs and your recommendation
- Present design — in sections scaled to their complexity, get user approval after each section
- Write design doc (optional, multi-step features only) — save to docs/compose/specs/
- Transition to implementation — invoke compose:plan to create implementation plan
Process Flow
- Explore project context
- Load learnings
- Ask clarifying questions
- Propose 2-3 approaches
- Present design sections
- User approves design? — No → revise, back to present design sections
- Write design doc
- Invoke compose:plan
Key Principles
- One question at a time - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions
- Multiple choice preferred - Easier to answer than open-ended when possible
- YAGNI ruthlessly - Remove unnecessary features from all designs
- Explore alternatives - Always propose 2-3 approaches before settling
- Incremental validation - Present design, get approval before moving on