Clarifying Questions

Clarifying Questions

Resolve decision-critical ambiguity before continuing.

Clarifying Questions

• Use this protocol before continuing when the request is not yet clear enough.
• Keep asking until the next action can be completed without decision-critical assumptions.

Rules

• Before planning, editing, executing, publishing, or giving a final recommendation, first check whether any decision-critical detail is missing, contradictory, or unclear.
• Do not assume missing user intent. Use local evidence when it can resolve the ambiguity safely; otherwise ask.
• Do not ask about details that can be verified quickly from code, docs, tests, config, or recent changes.
• In non-critical situations, still avoid invented assumptions: either cite local evidence or ask the user.

Trigger When

• The request could reasonably mean more than one thing.
• Scope, target behavior, permissions, constraints, or acceptance criteria are unclear.
• A wrong assumption could change code, data, release behavior, or user-facing output.
• The user asked for clarification-first behavior.

Do Not Trigger

• The task is already clear enough to complete safely.
• The answer is recoverable from local evidence without meaningful risk.
• The missing detail would not change the decision or result.

Question Protocol

• Ask only decision-critical questions.
• Ask numbered questions with lettered options; option A must be the recommended choice.
• Keep each batch short, usually 1-3 questions.
• Continue until the next action can be completed without decision-critical assumptions.
• Include a custom-answer option when useful.

Handoff

• Once the request is clear, continue with the relevant domain skill or normal workflow.
• If another skill already has a Clarifying Questions section, treat it as domain-specific fallback, not a replacement for this protocol.

Output

1. [Question]
A. [Recommended]
B. [Alternative]
C. [Alternative]
D. [Alternative]
E. [Alternative]
F. [Alternative]