superpowers-brainstorming

name	superpowers-brainstorming
description	Use when starting any creative work — a brainstorming partner that explores intent, requirements, and design before any code is written.

Brainstorming

This skill is the Stage 2 engine of the AI Universe Lite gem-builder pipeline. It is the same skill that the host agent (claude in jleechanorg/ai_universe) uses for first-principles thinking, adapted for a non-interactive server context.

When to use

Stage 2 of the gem-builder (backend/src/agents/stages/02-brainstorm.md) runs this skill once per gem creation. Stage 3 (03-spec.md) also activates it, scoped to spec generation.

How to use in a server context

The skill's interactive prompts are removed. Instead:

1. Inject the user prompt + reference docs as the message body.
2. Ask the LLM to produce a BrainstormOutput JSON (validated by backend/src/lib/schema.ts).
3. On Zod validation failure: retry once with the validation errors injected; on second failure, mark the pipeline failed at 02-brainstorm.

Output contract

{
  featureSet: string[],         // >= 1, e.g. ["character sheets", "combat", "world state"]
  tools: [{
    name: string,                // snake_case
    purpose: string,             // >= 8 chars
    inputs: string[],            // param names
    outputs: string[],           // field names
  }],
  modelNeeds: ("openai" | "anthropic" | "gemini" | "perplexity" | "openrouter" | "grok")[],
  reasoning: string,             // 80..2000 chars, markdown
}

Key principles

• No code yet. The output is design, not implementation.
• Explicit model selection. modelNeeds[] is read by Stage 5 to mount the right Secret Manager keys.
• Tools are user-visible. Each tool becomes a discoverable MCP tool in the gem; names matter.
• Reasoning is the audit trail. It is persisted to gem_runs/<runId>.state.brainstorm.reasoning and shown to the user in the run timeline.

Why this skill is in the registry, not inlined

Future gems might want their own brainstorm phases. Having it as a vendored skill (vs. an inline prompt) means:

• The same skill can be activated by gem-specific stages (e.g. gem-update brainstorming).
• We can A/B test prompt variants in one place.
• The skill is checked into git; the prompt has provenance.

Source

Adapted from ~/.claude/skills/superpowers-brainstorming/SKILL.md (the host's brainstorm skill). The host's version is interactive; this vendored copy is server-mode only.