brainstorming

name	brainstorming
description	You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

Overview

Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.

Start by understanding the current project context, then ask questions one at a time to refine the idea. Once you understand what you're building, present the design in small sections (200-300 words), checking after each section whether it looks right so far.

The Process

Understanding the idea:

• Check out the current project state first (files, docs, recent commits)
• Ask questions one at a time to refine the idea
• Prefer multiple choice questions when possible, but open-ended is fine too
• Only one question per message - if a topic needs more exploration, break it into multiple questions
• Focus on understanding: purpose, constraints, success criteria

Exploring approaches:

• Propose 2-3 different approaches with trade-offs
• Present options conversationally with your recommendation and reasoning
• Lead with your recommended option and explain why

Presenting the design:

• Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design
• Break it into sections of 200-300 words
• Ask after each section whether it looks right so far
• Cover: architecture, components, data flow, error handling, state behavior, edge cases, testing
• Be ready to go back and clarify if something doesn't make sense

Validating for testability (BDD readiness check):

After the full design is presented and validated, run every design point through this checklist before finalizing:

Dimension	Question to verify
Input/Output format	Are the exact formats of inputs and outputs specified? (data types, structure, encoding)
Error & exception scenarios	Is every failure mode explicitly described with its expected behavior? (not just the happy path)
Boundary & priority rules	When ambiguity or conflict can arise, are the resolution rules defined? (precedence, fallback, default values)
State behavior	Is it clear what state persists, what is isolated, and what resets? (sessions, variables, side effects)
Verifiable granularity	Can each behavior be independently tested with concrete steps and a single expected outcome?
Ambiguity check	Are there any implicit assumptions that different readers could interpret differently?

How to use the checklist:

• For each design section, evaluate all 6 dimensions
• Any dimension that fails → go back to the user with a targeted question to fill the gap
• Do NOT silently assume defaults — if the PRD will be consumed downstream (e.g., converted to BDD test cases), ambiguity is a defect
• Only proceed to documentation once all design points pass all 6 dimensions
• Mark dimensions as "N/A" only when genuinely not applicable (e.g., stateless operations have no state behavior)

After the Design

Documentation:

• Write the validated design to docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md
• Use elements-of-style:writing-clearly-and-concisely skill if available
• Commit the design document to git

Implementation (if continuing):

• Ask: "Ready to set up for implementation?"
• Use superpowers:using-git-worktrees to create isolated workspace
• Use superpowers:writing-plans to create detailed implementation plan

Key Principles

• One question at a time - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions
• Multiple choice preferred - Easier to answer than open-ended when possible
• YAGNI ruthlessly - Remove unnecessary features from all designs
• Explore alternatives - Always propose 2-3 approaches before settling
• Incremental validation - Present design in sections, validate each
• Be flexible - Go back and clarify when something doesn't make sense