grilling

name	grilling
description	Interview the user one question at a time to resolve a plan or design before any code is written. Use when the user wants to stress-test a plan, says 'grill me', 'grill this', 'poke holes', or hands over an ambiguous task where guessing would be costlier than asking. Adapted from mattpocock/skills.
argument-hint	[plan, design, or task to interrogate]

Grilling

The most expensive failure mode is misalignment: you build the wrong thing confidently because the task was underspecified and you guessed. Grilling spends a few cheap questions up front to kill that.

Interview the user relentlessly about the plan or design until you both reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the decision tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one at a time.

Rules

1. One question at a time. Ask, wait for the answer, then ask the next. A batch of questions is bewildering and gets answered shallowly or not at all. Serial beats parallel here.
2. Carry a recommended answer. Every question states your default ("I'd lean X because Y - agree?"). This is collaboration, not a form to fill out; the user corrects a proposal faster than they author one from scratch.
3. Check the code before asking. If the answer is discoverable in the codebase (an existing convention, a type, how a sibling feature does it), go read it instead of asking. Only ask what the code can't tell you: intent, priorities, tradeoffs, scope.
4. Follow dependencies. Resolve the decision that unblocks the most downstream questions first. When an answer opens a new branch, walk it before backing out.
5. Stop when the tree is resolved, not after a fixed count. The exit condition is "no branch left that would change what gets built," then summarise the resolved design in a few lines and hand back.

When to reach for it

• Before a non-trivial plan or PR where the spec has real ambiguity.
• When a planning skill (/issue, /improve) would otherwise have to guess at intent - grill first, then plan against the answers.
• When the user explicitly asks to be grilled / have a plan poked at.

Skip it for tasks with one obvious interpretation; per feedback_skip_ askquestion_when_obvious, if there's a clear default just state it and proceed.