Distilling Strategies Interactively

Distilling Strategies Interactively

Use this skill to shift from a pure execution agent to a Socratic engineering partner. Instead of unilaterally choosing a path or trying to implement a solution based on fragmented, contradictory, or incomplete documents, map the landscape, expose hidden assumptions, interview the user to resolve ambiguities, and synthesize a definitive decision matrix and action plan.

Why This Approach Matters

• Avoids Premature Optimization: Writing code before resolving architectural contradictions leads to wasted effort and refactoring loops.
• Extracts Tacit Knowledge: The most critical constraints (deadlines, organizational risk tolerance, legacy systems) are rarely written down in the primary technical proposals; they exist in the user's head.
• Builds Consensus: Presenting structured, modeled scenarios allows the user to see the direct consequences of their choices.

The Workflow at a Glance

Follow this sequence to guide the user from chaos to a clear action plan. Copy this checklist to track progress:

• Phase 1: Artifact Mapping & Contradiction Triage → Output: Strategic Landscape Analysis
• Phase 2: The Socratic Interview → Output: Structured 4-6 Question Quiz (Execution Halted)
• Phase 3: Scenario Modeling & Trade-Off Matrix → Output: Clean Markdown comparison table (Triggered by Quiz answers)
• Phase 4: Final Synthesis & Action Plan → Output: DISTILLED_STRATEGY.md

Detailed Execution Phases

Phase 1: Artifact Mapping & Contradiction Triage

Scan the target directory {document_directory} containing the unstructured files. Do not write any implementation code yet. Construct and document a map of the strategic landscape, focusing on:

1. Competing Paths: Identify where different documents or proposals suggest fundamentally different solutions to the same problem.
2. Blind Spots: Locate critical dimensions that are unaddressed (e.g., operational costs, migration path, legacy compatibility, long-term maintenance).
3. Implicit Assumptions: Highlight what the documents take for granted (e.g., "assuming the API is stable," "assuming infinite scalability").

Phase 1 Output Example

Present this analysis to the user to demonstrate understanding:

### Strategic Landscape Analysis

#### Competing Paths
*   Path A (Proposal 1): Suggests a complete rewrite using Framework X for
    maximum performance.
*   Path B (Proposal 2): Suggests an incremental refactor of the existing
    legacy system to minimize short-term risk.

#### Blind Spots
*   Neither proposal addresses the data migration strategy for the 10M existing
    users.
*   No timeline estimates are provided for the training required for the team to
    adopt Framework X.

#### Implicit Assumptions
*   Proposal 1 assumes we can freeze feature development for 3 months during the
    rewrite.

Phase 2: The Socratic Interview (The Quiz)

Based on the contradictions and blind spots identified in Phase 1, generate a highly targeted, interactive quiz to extract the user's latent constraints.

Rules for the Quiz:

• Limit the quiz to 4 to 6 questions total to avoid fatigue.
• Avoid vague questions (e.g., "What do you want?"). Use forced-choice or comparative questions.
• Interactive Option Selection:
  • If the hosting platform supports interactive choice modals (e.g., Antigravity's ask_question tool), you are strongly encouraged to present predictable or multiple-choice questions using that tool (configured with is_multi_select: true or single-select) to reduce user typing overhead.
  • For open-ended questions, or if the harness does not support interactive question modals, fall back to outputting the quiz as a numbered Markdown list directly in chat.
• Structure the quiz into exactly three categories:

1. Hard Constraints & Guardrails: Focus on unyielding boundaries (e.g., deadlines, budget, legacy systems).
2. Appetite & Risk Tolerance: Gauge preference for incremental safety vs. high-conviction leaps.
3. Tie-Breakers for Foundational Forks: Force a choice on the key conflicts identified in Phase 1.

Phase 2 Output Example

### Strategic Alignment Quiz

Please answer the following questions to help narrow down the path forward:

#### Category 1: Hard Constraints & Guardrails
1. Do we have a hard deadline for the first release that would make a complete
   rewrite (Path A) highly risky?
2. Are there specific legacy APIs we must maintain backward compatibility with?

#### Category 2: Appetite & Risk Tolerance
3. Is our primary goal a conservative, stable evolution (lower risk, higher
   technical debt), or a bold architectural reset (higher risk, clean slate)?

#### Category 3: Foundational Tie-Breakers
4. Proposal A prioritizes developer ergonomics but increases cloud spend by
   ~30%. Proposal B keeps costs flat but requires manual boilerplates. Which
   trade-off do you prefer?

---
[AWAITING_USER_INPUT: Provide your answers to the questions above to proceed with synthesis.]

[!IMPORTANT] STRICT GATE: After outputting the quiz, you MUST halt all autonomous generation. Do not attempt to guess the answers or proceed to Phase 3 until the user has explicitly responded.

Phase 3: Scenario Modeling & Trade-Off Matrix

(This phase activates ONLY after the user provides their answers to the Phase 2 quiz.)

Evaluate the competing paths through the lens of the user's quiz responses. Synthesize these into a clean Markdown table comparing the top 2 viable options.

Use this exact schema:

Phase 4: Final Synthesis & Action Plan

Create a definitive document named DISTILLED_STRATEGY.md in the conversation artifacts directory (<appDataDir>/brain/<conversation-id>) using the write_to_file tool. Save this document without requesting interactive approval/feedback (e.g., set RequestFeedback: false if using Antigravity's ArtifactMetadata), as it serves as a strategic record rather than an interactive gateway to immediate execution. This document serves as the source of truth for execution.

Structure the document as follows:

1. The Recommended Path: A clear, singular recommendation. Justify why this path is the optimal choice based on the intersection of the technical artifacts and the user's quiz inputs.
2. Immediate Next Steps (3-5 Actions): Actionable, concrete steps to kickstart the chosen path immediately. Avoid vague steps.
3. Deferred Decisions (Fast-Follows): List secondary decisions that can be safely put off to keep momentum high now, preventing analysis paralysis.

Phase 4 Output Example (DISTILLED_STRATEGY.md)

# Distilled Strategy: Incremental Modernization

## 1. The Recommended Path
Based on the provided proposals and your quiz responses, we recommend
**Option B (Incremental Modernization)**. While a complete rewrite (Option A)
offers a cleaner codebase, your hard deadline of Q3 and low risk tolerance make
it non-viable. Option B allows us to deliver value incrementally while
systematically paying down technical debt.

## 2. Immediate Next Steps
*   **Action 1:** Define the boundary interfaces for the legacy module to
    prepare for extraction.
*   **Action 2:** Set up a shadow deployment pipeline to compare the performance
    of the refactored module under production-like load.
*   **Action 3:** Archive Proposal A (Complete Rewrite) to align team focus.

## 3. Deferred Decisions (Fast-Follows)
*   **Deferred:** Selection of the state management library for the front-end
    (can be deferred until Sprint 3).
*   **Deferred:** Migration of historical analytics data (can be deferred until
    post-launch Phase 1.5).