# Vision Gnadd > Write or revise a project's VISION.md through an interview: the user brain-dumps an idea, the agent sorts it by commitment level (Core, Possibility space, Open tensions) in the user's own confirmed words, and writes the file in the shape GNADD.md defines. Rerunning on an existing VISION.md revises it in conversation and preserves what the user does not change. Use when the user wants to write a vision, capture the intent behind a new project, start VISION.md, or revise the one they have. Never produces a plan, roadmap, or spec. - Skill: `alexhagemeister/vision-gnadd` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add alexhagemeister/vision-gnadd` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/alexhagemeister/vision-gnadd/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Product & Planning - Author: AlexHagemeister (https://skillmd.com/u/alexhagemeister) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/alexhagemeister/vision-gnadd --- # Vision Write `VISION.md` with the user, through conversation. The user talks, the agent sorts and reflects back, the user confirms, the agent writes. The words in the file are the user's, whoever typed them. The file's shape is defined in the canonical guide (`GNADD.md`, "The intent document: VISION.md"). This skill does not restate the shape. It carries the interview that fills it. ## Auto-Invocation Gate If this skill was auto-selected from context rather than explicitly invoked with `/vision-gnadd`, stop before interviewing. Briefly explain why writing or revising VISION.md appears useful and ask: "Run `/vision-gnadd` now?" Proceed only after confirmation. ## GNADD Invariants - VISION.md holds intent, marked by commitment level. Nothing in it has a status, an order, or a plan. Those live in issues, PRs, and the phase. - Nothing enters Core that the user has not confirmed as true no matter what gets built. - The user's words are the words. Reflect them back for confirmation. Never paraphrase silently. - The skill writes the file. It never opens a milestone or an issue. Those go through the existing skills, and only on the user's yes. - For the shape, the admission test, and the rationale, read `GNADD.md` (section "The intent document: VISION.md"). It is not bundled with this skill. Read it from the repo root when working inside the GNADD repo, or fetch it from the pinned URL (pinned to a release by `scripts/release.sh`, never hand-edited): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AlexHagemeister/gnadd/v0.5.0/GNADD.md For workflow orientation, use `help-gnadd`. ## 1. Check For An Existing File ```bash test -f VISION.md && cat VISION.md ``` - **Absent:** fresh mode. Go to step 2. - **Present:** revise mode. Read the whole file. Say what it holds in two or three lines (the experience at the center, the invariants by number, how many threads the possibility space carries, the open tensions by name). Then ask what the user wants to change, or whether they have new material to add. Do not start over, and do not re-interview for anything the user does not raise. Go to step 3 with only the new or changed material. ## 2. Take The Brain Dump Ask for the idea as the user would tell a friend, in one go, however long and however messy. Do not interrupt with questions, do not ask for structure, and do not ask what matters most. One prompt, then listen. If the user gives a sentence or two, ask once for more ("Keep going: what could it become, what would make it great, what are you unsure about?") and then work with what you have. The grill in step 3 draws out what the dump lacks. A thin VISION.md that is all the user's is better than a full one padded by the agent. ## 3. The Grill The interview borrows its mechanics from Matt Pocock's `grilling` skill and narrows its aim. Grilling sharpens a plan until the user can commit. This grill sharpens only Core, and it treats "I don't know" as an answer that closes a branch rather than a gap to keep digging at. The possibility space is never grilled. **Rounds and the frontier.** Model the material as a tree of decisions. The frontier is every question whose prerequisites are settled: the questions that can be asked now without guessing at answers not yet heard. Ask the whole frontier in one round, numbered, each with a recommended answer. Then wait. Each round's answers push the frontier outward. A question that depends on another question still open belongs to a later round. Format a round like so: ``` 1. **** Recommended: 2. **** Recommended: ``` **Recommended answers.** Where the dump already holds the answer, the recommendation is the user's own sentence, quoted. Where it does not, the recommendation is marked as the agent's proposal ("my proposal:"). A proposal never enters the file as written. The user's confirmation or rewording does. **Facts are the agent's job.** When a question turns on a fact (what the repo holds, what a tool can do, what the user said in an earlier session when a connector to their notes is present), look it up. Ask the user only for decisions. ### The frontier seeds The shape in `GNADD.md` says what the file needs. These are the questions that fill it, in the order their prerequisites settle. **Round 1: the center, and what is Core.** - What is the experience at the center? One or two sentences, the user's. - For each claim in the dump, the one sorting question: is this true no matter what gets built? Recommended home given for each. Yes goes to Core. Anything else stays in the possibility space with no further question. Two claims that fight, or a claim the user is unsure of, go to Open tensions. **Round 2: unlocked by the confirmed invariants.** - For each invariant: why does it hold? The reason gets attached, and the invariants are numbered in the order confirmed. - What is this deliberately not? Non-goals, in the user's words. - What does reality impose that the vision bears on? A platform gate, a physical limit, a legal line. Only what the vision must respect, never the how. **Round 3: tensions.** - Where do two possibilities fight? Name each in a sentence and stop. Never ask the user to pick a side. - What do you not know yet? Each "I don't know" is recorded as a tension and closes its branch. The grill is done when the frontier is empty: every claim has a home, every invariant has a reason, and nothing has been assumed silently. ### Rules that hold across every round - **The user's words.** Read a claim back in their phrasing with the proposed home. When a verb must change to fit its section (a "will" or "should" in the possibility space becomes "could", "one direction is", "alternatively"), show the changed sentence and ask. Never change wording without reading the change back. - **Do not prune.** Every claim from the dump lands somewhere. Loose, contradictory, or half-formed is fine in the possibility space. Group it lightly by theme in the user's phrasing and impose nothing more. - **Do not add.** The agent proposes homes, verb changes, and recommended answers. It does not author claims. If the user asks what is missing, answer with a question from the seeds, not a sentence for the file. - **Do not rank.** Never ask whether something is likely, important, or first. Those questions manufacture an order the file is not allowed to hold. - **Catch the how.** A library, a file layout, an architecture, or a step sequence in the dump is not a vision claim. Say so and ask what it is for. The reason it serves usually is a claim, and that goes in. The how stays out. - **Catch status.** "First", "next", "phase two", "stretch goal", "TBD", "done when" describe order or state. Point them at the phase and the issues, and leave them out. The content underneath a "TBD" is usually a tension, and that goes in. - **Passivity is a failure.** A round of nothing but "yes" to the agent's proposals produces a file the agent wrote. When the user has only agreed for a whole round, say so and ask whether the recommendations are their view or the path of least resistance. ## 4. Write The File Write `VISION.md` at the repo root in the shape `GNADD.md` defines: Core, Possibility space, Open tensions, in that order, with the operating clause in the file's own words and the possibility-space header stating that nothing in it is a commitment and that a thread is pulled into an issue when it is time. Declarative present tense. Never "should" or "will". Plain words for a reader with zero context. Before writing, check the draft against the ban list and fix anything that fails: no library choices, no file layout, no architecture, no task list, no status, no ordering words, no dates. A line the user confirmed that fails the list gets read back with the reason, not dropped silently. Show the whole file and ask the user to read it. Take corrections in their words. Write again until they say it is right. **Revise mode:** change only the lines the user changed or added. Every other line stays byte for byte. When a change touches Core, say so, and name how it lands per the guide's open question on Core routing (an issue and PR, or a direct commit): pick one, and say which. ## 5. How The File Lands The skill writes the file to the working tree and reports the path. It does not commit. Say plainly that the file is unstaged, and that on a rails-protected `main` the honest route is a branch and PR (`/quickfix-gnadd` fits a fresh VISION.md: the guard exempts a newly added `VISION.md` from its line budget, so the file lands without an override. A Core revision on an existing project goes back under the budget and may deserve an issue, per the open question above). The commit is the user's act. ## 6. The Closing Offer Ask two questions, one at a time, and act on neither without a yes: 1. **Open the first phase?** If yes, ask what the phase is trying to find out and what ends it, in the user's words, and run: ```bash bash "/gnadd.sh" phase open "" --description "<what it is trying to find out, and what ends it>" ``` (`prime-gnadd` bundles the script. This skill does not.) Skip the question when a phase is already open. 2. **Capture the first issue?** If yes, hand off to `/new-issue-gnadd`. Its interview mines this conversation, cites the invariant the issue serves, and attaches to the open phase. Do not draft the issue here. A "no" to either is complete. Do not nudge again. ## Closing Guidance Report in three lines: the file's path and whether it is new or revised, how many invariants Core holds and how many tensions are named, and what the user said yes or no to in the closing offer. No plan, no next steps beyond that.