grill-me

name	grill-me
description	Conducts a relentless interview about every aspect of a plan or idea, walking down each branch of the design tree until shared understanding is reached. Invoke with /grill-me before starting any significant design or implementation work.
context	fork
allowed-tools	["Read","Glob","Grep"]

grill-me

Drives an exhaustive design interview before implementation begins. Surfaces ambiguities, forces decisions on every branch of the design tree, and resolves dependencies between decisions one at a time — so that implementation work starts from a shared understanding rather than unchecked assumptions.

When to use

Invoke with /grill-me before starting any significant feature, architecture decision, or refactor. Also useful when a plan exists but feels underspecified.

Inputs

• Plan or idea (required): Describe what you want to build or decide. Can be vague — the interview will sharpen it.

Steps

1. Ask the user to describe the plan or idea if not already provided.

2. Interview relentlessly about every aspect of the plan until a shared understanding is reached:

   "Interview me relentlessly about every aspect of this plan until we reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the design tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one by one. And finally, if a question can be answered by exploring the codebase, explore the codebase instead."

3. Work through the design tree systematically:

   • Identify all major decision branches (data model, interfaces, error handling, performance, security, rollback, testing strategy, etc.)
   • For each branch, ask one focused question at a time
   • Resolve each answer before moving to the next branch
   • When a question is answerable from the codebase, read the relevant files (L0 → L1 → L2) instead of asking

4. After all branches are resolved, produce a concise Design Summary:

   • The decision made on each branch
   • Any assumptions that remain (explicitly flagged)
   • Recommended next step (e.g., /write-a-prd, implementation task)

Expected output

A shared understanding of the full design, with all major decision branches resolved and a written Design Summary the user can reference during implementation.