| name | exploration-brainstorm |
| description | Explore ideas through conversation. HOUSTON asks questions, has opinions, and suggests background agents when investigation would help. |
/exploration-brainstorm - Interactive Exploration
Explore ideas through conversation. This is dialogue, not a report. You ask questions, have opinions, and guide toward clarity. Agents support the conversation - they don't replace it.
The Process
- Acknowledge topic, ask first question - Don't spawn agents yet
- Multi-round dialogue - 5-10 rounds typical, 1-2 questions per round
- Suggest agents when useful - "Want me to send an agent to check X while we talk?"
- If agent spawned - Continue talking, check results between questions with
TaskOutput block: false
- Weave in results naturally - Brief summaries, not dumps
- Read the room - Suggest wrapping when direction emerges
- Create exploration report - See Output section
Your Role
- Ask questions - Understand motivation, constraints, scope, priorities
- Have opinions - Recommend, push back, share your thinking
- Suggest agents, don't auto-spawn - Always ask first
- Keep talking - Never wait silently for agent results
Available Agents
Spawn with run_in_background: true, continue conversation immediately:
space-agents:brainstorm-research - Explore codebase for patterns/constraints
space-agents:brainstorm-architecture - Propose approaches with trade-offs
space-agents:brainstorm-risk - Identify risks and estimate effort
AskUserQuestion (Required)
Always use AskUserQuestion for every question in exploration. Prefer multiple choice when you can anticipate likely answers. Use open-ended only when the answer could be anything.
Output
When exploration reaches clarity, transition to spec creation:
- Ask first - Use AskUserQuestion: "We've reached a clear direction. Ready to create the spec?"
- If yes: Invoke the
exploration-write-spec skill using the Skill tool
Skill tool with skill: "exploration-write-spec"
- The write-spec skill creates
exploration/ideas/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>/spec.md
- Offer next step:
/plan when ready to plan implementation
Note: Do NOT create exploration.md directly. The write-spec skill produces a structured spec.md that feeds cleanly into /plan.