Brainstorm

Brainstorm

Diverge, then converge, then hand the winner to sw:increment. This never replaces the spec — it decides which thing to spec.

Depth

Steps

1. Frame. One sentence: the decision to be made, and what would make an answer good. Write down 3–5 criteria up front (cost, time-to-ship, blast radius, reversibility, who maintains it). Choosing criteria after seeing the options is how bias sneaks in.
2. Diverge. Generate the options before judging any of them. Force variety:
   • the obvious one (do the thing directly);
   • the cheap one (what buys 80% for 20%);
   • the buy-instead-of-build one;
   • the do-nothing / defer one, with what it costs;
   • one that inverts an assumption everyone is making. Name each option in 3–6 words.
3. Converge. One table: option × criteria, with a one-line "kills it if" per option. Then a short paragraph per surviving option: how it works, what it costs, what breaks.
4. Pick. State the recommendation, the runner-up, and the one fact that would flip the decision. If the honest answer is "we need data first", say that and name the experiment.
5. Hand off. sw:increment "<the picked option>". Paste the rejected alternatives into the new spec's Approach section — that is where they earn their keep.

Rules

• Never grade an option while still generating options.
• Every option gets the same amount of scrutiny; do not build a straw man to justify the favourite.
• Tables and short paragraphs, not essays.
• Persist the doc only when there is an increment to hold it (.specweave/increments/<id>/reports/brainstorm.md); otherwise keep it in the conversation.
• If the user already knows what they want, skip to sw:increment and say why.

Multi-perspective variant

For a genuinely contested decision, run three lenses over the same option set — advocate (strongest case for), critic (how each fails in production), pragmatist (what ships this week) — and merge. In Claude Code these can be parallel subagents (sw:team in brainstorm mode); in other tools, do the three passes in sequence and label them.

Resources

• Official Documentation