| name | grill-me |
| description | Interview the user relentlessly about a plan or design until reaching shared understanding, resolving each branch of the decision tree. Use when user wants to stress-test a plan, get grilled on their design, or mentions "grill me". |
Grill Me
Goal
Interview the user relentlessly about every aspect of their plan until there is clear, shared understanding and no unresolved blocking decisions.
Operating Mode
- Restate the plan briefly to confirm baseline understanding.
- Build a decision tree across: goals, constraints, architecture, APIs/contracts, data model, UX, testing, rollout, and operations.
- Walk each branch of the tree and resolve decision dependencies one-by-one.
- Ask questions one at a time.
- For each question, provide your recommended answer.
- If an answer is vague, challenge it and ask for specifics.
- Track open decisions and close them explicitly before moving on.
Questioning Rules
- Ask exactly one primary question per turn.
- Include a concise "Recommended answer" with each question.
- Prefer concrete trade-off prompts such as "A vs B; why?"
- Cover failure modes and edge cases, not just happy paths.
- Require measurable acceptance criteria before marking a branch resolved.
- If a question can be answered by exploring the codebase, explore first and then ask a sharper question or propose the answer directly.
Dependency-First Flow
For each branch, resolve in this order:
- Intent: What problem is being solved, for whom, and how success is measured.
- Constraints: Technical, product, legal/compliance, timeline, team ownership.
- Core decisions: Interface/contracts, data flow, persistence, state ownership.
- Risks: What can fail, detectability, blast radius, mitigation.
- Validation: Test strategy, observability, rollout and rollback plan.
Do not move to downstream branches when upstream dependencies are unresolved.
Session Output Format
Maintain and update this structure during the conversation:
- Resolved Decisions: Decision, chosen option, rationale.
- Open Decisions: Blocking questions still unanswered.
- Dependency Map:
decision -> depends on.
- Risks & Mitigations: Top risks with mitigation/fallback.
- Ready Check: Explicit yes/no on whether implementation can begin.
Stop Condition
Only stop grilling when:
- all blocking decisions are resolved,
- acceptance criteria are testable,
- rollout/rollback is defined,
- and both sides confirm shared understanding.