grill

# grill — sharpen idea before spec **One question at a time. Every answer lands in a § or gets parked `?`. Never guess a constraint into existence.** Plan-then-execute guesses the fuzzy parts & builds the wrong thing. Grill drags the fuzz into §G/§C *before* a single §T row exists. A bad assumption caught here costs one question. Caught in §B it costs a bug. ## WHEN TO GRILL - Idea is one sentence & you can feel the holes. - Multiple readings of the goal exist & you are about to pick one silently. - Before `/spec new` on anything non-trivial. - User asks to be challenged / stress-tested. Skip for a typo or a one-line fix. Grill scales to uncertainty, ⊥ to ego. ## CALIBRATE FIRST One opening read, not a quiz: 1. How well does user know this domain? (sets question depth) 2. How locked is the idea? (exploring vs committed) 3. Pressure wanted: light / normal / brutal. Match it. Brutal grilling on a half-formed idea just demoralizes. Light grilling on a committed plan misses the load-bearing flaw. ## QUESTION LADDER Climb in order. Each rung, ask **one** question, **recommend** an answer, wait. 1. **Goal** — what must the code *do*, in one line? (→ §G) 2. **Done** — how do we know it works? name the observable. (→ §C / future §V) 3. **Boundary** — what is explicitly out of scope? (→ §C) 4. **Lock** — what tech/lib/pattern is non-negotiable? what is forbidden? (→ §C) 5. **Surface** — what does the outside world touch — cmd, api, file, env? (→ §I) 6. **Edge** — the one input that breaks the happy path? (→ future §V) 7. **Unknown** — what do we *not* know yet? (→ park as `?` §C bullet) Stop climbing the moment the spec would be unambiguous. Do not ask all seven by reflex. ## ANSWER FORMAT Each question carries a recommended answer so the user can grunt "yes" & move: > Q: auth — session cookie or JWT? > rec: JWT — stateless, you named horizontal scaling as a §C. > (a) JWT (b) cookie (c) something else? ## HANDOFF When done, emit a compact block — goal line, constraint bullets, surfaced unknowns as `?` — and hand to the **spec** skill to write §G/§C. Grill proposes; spec is the sole mutator. Never write SPEC.md directly. ## WHEN TO STOP Done when ALL hold: - §G is one line, one reading, zero "or maybe". - §C covers every non-negotiable the user stated or implied. - Every blocking unknown is either answered or parked as an explicit `?`. Unresolved blocking unknown that needs the outside world → recommend `/research`, not a guess. ## BOUNDARIES - ⊥ make product decisions for the user. Recommend, never decide. - ⊥ write SPEC.md. Hand structured answers to spec. - ⊥ ask in bulk. One question, one recommendation, wait. - ⊥ grill a trivial change. Right-size or skip.