Interview Me

Interview Me

Interview Me is for intent discovery before work starts. It is the step before a spec, plan, or implementation, when the user's first ask may still be a proxy for the real goal.

Unlike grill-me, which stress-tests an existing plan through dialogue, Interview Me is for gathering missing intent from the requester and can produce a questionnaire-style batch when interactive back-and-forth would be too slow.

When to Use

• The request is missing who, why, success criteria, constraints, or non-goals
• The user asked for a conventional artifact ("build a dashboard", "make it faster") without saying what problem that artifact solves
• You notice yourself filling in assumptions before any plan exists
• The user explicitly asks to be interviewed, challenged, or stress-tested before starting

When NOT to Use

Loading Constraint

This skill needs an answerable user, but not always a live turn-by-turn exchange. If interactive back-and-forth is impractical, convert only the mutually independent unresolved questions into a questionnaire the requester can answer asynchronously. Do not invoke it when there is no responsible person who can answer.

Workflow

1. State your hypothesis and confidence

Before asking anything, write down:

• your best current read of what the user wants
• a confidence number from 0 to 100

If the number feels high but you cannot predict the next few answers, the number is too high.

2. Default to linear questioning; batch only independent clarifications

Choose the mode before each round:

• Linear mode (default): use when one answer changes what you should ask next. Ask one focused question at a time and resolve it before proceeding.
• Batch mode: use only when several questions are mutually independent and the extra round-trip cost is high enough that asking them together will materially save time. Present the whole ready set in one numbered round, with one idea per question and your current hypothesis attached to each.

Every question should include:

• one focused question
• your current guess for the answer
• the reasoning behind that guess

Do not batch dependent questions. When you switch to batch mode, order the questions by importance, group related topics together, and end with a catch-all or deadline item if the answers are being collected asynchronously. Return to linear mode as soon as later questions depend on earlier answers.

3. Listen for "want" vs "should want"

Probe when the user answers with:

• best-practice slogans
• vague quality words like "scalable" or "robust"
• conventional artifacts instead of outcomes

Useful probe:

If you did not have to justify this to anyone, what would you actually want?

4. Restate the intent in a structured form

When confidence is high enough, write back:

• Outcome
• User
• Why now
• Success
• Constraint
• Out of scope

Out of scope is required. Many mismatches hide there.

5. Get an explicit yes

These do not count as confirmation:

• "whatever you think"
• "sounds good"
• silence followed by "let's start"

Keep refining until the user explicitly confirms the restated intent.

6. Stop when the intent is predictable

You are done when you can reasonably predict the user's reaction to the next few questions you would ask.

Then hand off to the next skill:

• create-prd if the intent needs a product spec
• grill-me if a plan now exists but needs stress-testing
• direct implementation if the ask is now clear and bounded

Output Template

## Confirmed Intent

- Outcome: ...
- User: ...
- Why now: ...
- Success: ...
- Constraint: ...
- Out of scope: ...

Confirmed by user: Yes

Common Rationalizations

Red Flags

• Three or more questions in one message
• Questions without your current guess attached
• Producing a plan or spec before confirmation
• Skipping the out-of-scope line in the restatement

Verification

• The first turn included a hypothesis and confidence number
• Linear mode was used for dependent questions, and batch mode only for truly independent clarifications
• At least one probe tested for "want" vs "should want" when needed
• The restated intent included outcome, user, why now, success, constraint, and out of scope
• The user explicitly confirmed the restatement

See Also

• grill-me - pressure-test a plan that already exists
• task-intake-router - route work to the right Copilot execution mode
• create-prd - turn confirmed intent into a product requirements document