Grilling

Grilling

A relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design by asking pointed questions one at a time.

Use case

Use this skill when the user wants to:

• Stress-test a plan or design before implementation
• Challenge assumptions and expose blind spots
• Reach shared understanding on a complex decision

Core principle

Grilling is a stateless interview primitive. It writes no files and leaves no workspace behind. The only output is a sharper version of the idea.

Workflow

1. Start fresh — Invoke in a fresh conversation.
2. Ask one question at a time — Walk down each branch of the design tree.
3. Provide recommended answers — For each question, offer your recommended answer.
4. Explore the codebase — If a question can be answered by exploring, explore instead of asking.
5. Resolve the frontier — Each round covers the entire frontier.
6. No backtracking — Never ask something that hinges on an answer you haven't heard yet.

Rules

• Ask questions one at a time, not in batches.
• Always provide a recommended answer for each question.
• Be relentless but constructive.
• Stop when all branches are resolved.

Credit

This skill is based on the work of Matt Pocock (@mattpocock). Original source: mattpocock/skills. Licensed under MIT.

How to use?

1. Download

Go to the AGENT KD SKILL gallery and find this skill card. Click Download to save the SKILL.md file to your computer.

2. Install

Copy the downloaded SKILL.md into your agent's skills directory:

Example for opencode: ash mkdir -p ~/.config/opencode/skills/<skill-name> cp SKILL.md ~/.config/opencode/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md

3. Use

Restart your agent session. The skill will auto-load based on its description. You can also invoke it explicitly by typing @ in your agent.

4. Verify

Ask your agent something related to the skill's purpose. If it responds using the skill's instructions, you're all set.