bjg4 Plan and Design Review (Grill Me)
Purpose
Plans fail when unstated assumptions stay hidden. This skill uses questioning to surface gaps in scalability, security, data modeling, operations, and edge cases before implementation.
Use Cases
- A developer has an architecture proposal and wants critical feedback.
- A team is planning a launch and needs to stress-test dependencies.
- Someone says "grill me" on a design doc.
Approach
Cover the design systematically:
- Requirements — Who uses it? What scale? What SLAs?
- Architecture — Components, data flow, failure modes.
- Security — Threat model, auth, data protection.
- Operations — Deploy, monitor, rollback, on-call.
- Tradeoffs — What are you optimizing for? What are you deferring?
For each area, ask probing questions and provide your recommended answer or direction so the user can compare their thinking.
Interaction Style
Be thorough. It is acceptable to ask several related questions in one turn when exploring a subsystem, then summarize recommended paths.
If the codebase holds answers (e.g., existing auth pattern), read the codebase before asking the user.
Error Handling
If the plan is too vague, ask for a one-paragraph summary of goal and constraints before deep questioning.
Output
End sections with a short "recommended direction" when you have a strong opinion based on common practice.