Grill With Docs

Interview me relentlessly about every aspect of this plan until we reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the design tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one-by-one. For each question, provide your recommended answer.

Ask the questions one at a time, waiting for feedback on each question before continuing. Asking multiple questions at once is bewildering.

If a fact can be found by exploring the environment (filesystem, tools, codebase), look it up rather than asking me. The decisions, though, are mine — put each one to me and wait for my answer.

Do not act on the plan until I confirm we have reached a shared understanding.

A branch is closed when it is answered — or, rarely, when it is parked as an unresolved question (see below). Parking is the only sanctioned way to leave a branch open; never leave one silently unresolved.

Domain awareness

During codebase exploration, also look for existing documentation:

File structure

Most repos have a single context:

/
├── CONTEXT.md
├── docs/
│   └── adr/
│       ├── 0001-event-sourced-orders.md
│       └── 0002-postgres-for-write-model.md
└── src/

If a CONTEXT-MAP.md exists at the root, the repo has multiple contexts. The map points to where each one lives:

/
├── CONTEXT-MAP.md
├── docs/
│   └── adr/                          ← system-wide decisions
├── src/
│   ├── ordering/
│   │   ├── CONTEXT.md
│   │   └── docs/adr/                 ← context-specific decisions
│   └── billing/
│       ├── CONTEXT.md
│       └── docs/adr/

Create files lazily — only when you have something to write. If no CONTEXT.md exists, create one when the first term is resolved. If no docs/adr/ exists, create it when the first ADR is needed.

During the session

Challenge against the glossary

When the user uses a term that conflicts with the existing language in CONTEXT.md, call it out immediately. "Your glossary defines 'cancellation' as X, but you seem to mean Y — which is it?"

Sharpen fuzzy language

When the user uses vague or overloaded terms, propose a precise canonical term. "You're saying 'account' — do you mean the Customer or the User? Those are different things."

Discuss concrete scenarios

When domain relationships are being discussed, stress-test them with specific scenarios. Invent scenarios that probe edge cases and force the user to be precise about the boundaries between concepts.

Cross-reference with code

When the user states how something works, check whether the code agrees. If you find a contradiction, surface it: "Your code cancels entire Orders, but you just said partial cancellation is possible — which is right?"

Update CONTEXT.md inline

When a term is resolved, update CONTEXT.md right there. Don't batch these up — capture them as they happen. Use the format in CONTEXT-FORMAT.md.

CONTEXT.md should be totally devoid of implementation details. Do not treat CONTEXT.md as a spec, a scratch pad, or a repository for implementation decisions. It is a glossary and nothing else.

Park what the user genuinely cannot answer yet

Occasionally the grill hits a question the user simply cannot close right now — the decision belongs to someone else, depends on data that doesn't exist yet, or is waiting on something outside the codebase. The feature still has to get built. Rather than stalling the grill or letting the agent quietly guess, park the question and build a black box: a named placeholder, generic or empty, that can be swapped when the answer arrives.

This is rare. Expect zero parked questions in most sessions. It is not a valve for "the user hesitated" or "this is getting long".

When to park

All four must hold:

1. You asked and recommended. The grill's default is a recommended answer; parking only happens after the user has heard yours and still can't decide.
2. The blocker is real and external. They're waiting on a person, a contract, a measurement, a product call — not on thinking about it for another minute. You must be able to name the blocker in one line.
3. A wrong guess would be costly or invisible. If any sane default works and nobody would be misled, don't park — take the default, note it in the tracker's Constraints/Notes, and move on. Parking is for when a silently-guessed answer would look deliberate and be wrong.
4. The rest of the work survives without it. There is a coherent placeholder that keeps the flow whole. If the mission cannot proceed without inventing data or behaviour, it isn't parkable — say the task is blocked and stop.

Park vs. handoff vs. ADR

• Park (unresolved question) — an open decision inside this task's scope that the build must route around now. Stays with the task.
• Handoff — a tangent that deserves its own task. Different scope, not a black box. Use the handoff skill; the current task doesn't wait on it.
• ADR — a decision that was made, is hard to reverse, and needs its rationale recorded. The opposite of a parked question. When a parked question is later resolved and meets the ADR bar, write the ADR then.

Never park something that changes the domain language. A term you need to name the code cannot be deferred — settle it in CONTEXT.md and grill the behaviour behind it.

How to park

1. Say it plainly: "Parking that as UQ-2 — we'll ship a fixed 30-day window as a placeholder and swap it when product decides." Get the user's nod on the placeholder, not on the answer.
2. Record it in unresolved-questions.md next to the task's progress-tracker.md (path from .ab-method/structure/index.yaml), using the format in UNRESOLVED-QUESTIONS-FORMAT.md. If no task folder exists yet, hold the parked questions in the session and write the file the moment it does.
3. Mark every mission that builds on the black box with ⚠️ UQ-n in the tracker, so whoever runs it knows a placeholder is in play.
4. Return to the branch you were grilling. Parking one question does not end the grill.

Then keep going as normal — the black box is a placeholder in the plan, not a hole in it.

Offer ADRs sparingly

Only offer to create an ADR when all three are true:

1. Hard to reverse — the cost of changing your mind later is meaningful
2. Surprising without context — a future reader will wonder "why did they do it this way?"
3. The result of a real trade-off — there were genuine alternatives and you picked one for specific reasons

If any of the three is missing, skip the ADR. Use the format in ADR-FORMAT.md.