| name | ultra-brainstorming |
| description | Design-first discovery for Codex Ultra vNext. Use before planning or implementation whenever the request is ambiguous, creative, architecture-sensitive, or likely to span multiple files, workflows, or user-facing behavior. This skill turns a vague idea into an approved spec with one-question-at-a-time clarification, alternative comparison, and an explicit implementation gate. |
Ultra Brainstorming
Use this skill to create a design-quality front end before planning or coding.
This is the main vNext upgrade inspired by obra/superpowers.
Hard Gate
Do not move to planning or implementation until you have:
- explored the project context
- clarified ambiguities one question at a time when needed
- proposed 2-3 approaches with tradeoffs
- presented a recommended design
- received explicit approval or resolved objections
If the task is truly tiny, compress the design. Do not skip it.
Workflow
- Explore the codebase, docs, recent diffs, and any existing specs.
- Assess whether the request is one bounded change or several independent
subsystems. Decompose if needed.
- Ask one clarifying question at a time. Prefer multiple choice when useful.
- Propose 2-3 approaches with your recommendation first.
- Present the design in sections sized to the complexity.
- Write the approved spec artifact.
- Self-review for ambiguity, contradiction, and hidden scope creep.
- Hand off to
ultra-planning.
Preferred Outputs
At minimum produce:
- problem framing
- non-goals
- success criteria
- constraints
- proposed architecture or flow
- testing or verification intent
- open decisions or assumptions
If the repo uses OpenSpec, write into proposal.md, design.md, and
tasks.md under the relevant openspec/changes/<change-id>/ directory.
Quality Bar
- surface ambiguity instead of silently picking an interpretation
- prefer the simplest design that satisfies the request
- avoid speculative abstractions
- explicitly call out acceptance criteria that downstream planning will need
Read brainstorming-flow and then rely on
ultra-vnext-core for the shared contracts.
