Grill Me

Adversarial interview. Walk every branch of the design tree; resolve dependencies one decision at a time; recommend an answer per question.

Modality disambiguation [LOAD-BEARING]

Three adjacent skills — pick the right one before invoking.

Rule of thumb: intent unclear → clarifying-question protocol. Plan exists, no domain rubric → this skill. Plan exists, domain rubric required → domain-model grilling.

Process

1. Anchor on the design under test

Confirm what the plan is in one sentence. If the user's pitch is too thin to interrogate, pivot to a clarifying-question protocol instead.

2. Walk the decision tree

For every fork in the design — scope, boundary, ordering, error surface, contract, naming, public-API shape, irreversibility — ask one question. Order by dependency: parents before children.

For each question:

• State the question precisely (one fact at a time).
• Recommend an answer with a one-sentence rationale.
• Wait for the user; never proceed on assumed answers.

3. Explore the codebase before asking when possible

If a question can be resolved by reading the code, read it instead of asking.

• Discovery: fd -e <ext> <path>.
• Structural search: ast-grep run -p '<pattern>' -l <lang> -C 3.
• Lexical search: git --no-pager grep -n -C 3 '<pattern>'.
• Targeted read: bat -P -p -n -r START:END <path>.
• Dispatch an Explore agent when the question spans >5 files or >2 directories.

4. Resolve dependencies before descending

Do not ask child questions while the parent is unresolved. If a parent answer invalidates a queued child, drop the child.

5. Stop conditions

Halt when one of:

• Every fork has a committed answer with a stated rationale.
• A blocking unknown surfaces that the user must investigate offline.
• The plan dissolves under questioning — declare it and recommend pivot.

Question taxonomy (what counts as a fork worth grilling)

• Public API shape — names, signatures, error modes, ordering.
• Storage / state ownership — single source vs replicated, sync vs async, consistency model.
• Boundary placement — what crosses a process / network / module seam.
• Failure surface — throw vs Result, retry policy, partial-failure semantics.
• Concurrency — ownership of mutable state, lock ordering, backpressure, cancellation.
• Irreversibility — migrations, deletions, deployments, paid calls.
• Performance budget — p50/p95 targets, allocation budget, hot-path constraints.

Skip — pure mechanics: syntax, import order, brace placement, repo-conventional choices.

Recommendation discipline

• Always recommend. "You decide" is forbidden.
• Render the recommendation by appending (Recommended) to the option label and placing it first per the contract below.
• Distinguish recommendation from verdict: the user can override; the rec is taste, not gate.
• If no defensible one-sentence rationale exists, the question is not a real fork — drop it.

AskUserQuestion tool contract (Claude Code reference)

This protocol assumes a single "ask user" tool with the contract below. Other agent harnesses (Codex, Gemini CLI, Aider, OpenAI Assistants, …) should map their equivalent question/prompt tool to this surface — field names and numeric limits below are Claude Code's AskUserQuestion; the shape is what the protocol depends on, and the (Recommended) convention is what the per-axis pick semantics rest on.

Antipattern: override-checklist UI [LOAD-BEARING]

Bad shape — never generate this:

Which of these defaults should I override before I lock in the plan?
❯ 1. [ ] Diff-only mode
  2. [ ] Include root prompts
  3. [ ] system-prompt-baseline.md wins on conflict
  4. [ ] Bump plugin manifests

This is a single multiSelect: true question where unticked = "default stands". It collapses four independent axes into one checkbox list. Never generate this shape.

Correct shape — one single-select question per axis:

Q1 — Scope (single-select)
❯ Diff-only mode (Recommended) — propagate only recently-new baseline
  Full block alignment — full sweep across all blocks

Q2 — Roots (single-select)
❯ Skip root prompts (Recommended) — derivative artifacts
  Include root prompts — also touch ODD/{GENERIC,COMPACTED,MINIMAL}

Q3 — Conflict policy (single-select)
❯ Preserve target policy (Recommended) — non-conflicting only
  system-prompt-baseline.md wins — override divergent target policy

Q4 — Manifests (single-select)
❯ Skip bump (Recommended) — sibling-harness scope
  Bump minor — semver per system-prompt-baseline.md memory note

Positive routing rule: When the brief calls for the user to rarely have to type, route the intent into N per-axis single-select questions (≤4 per fire) — each axis's (Recommended) option carries the default. Ticking (Recommended) is accepting the default.

Never use multiSelect for axis-with-default override semantics. Reserve multiSelect strictly for additive picks (feature toggles, optional sub-tasks).

Per fire (one tool call):

• questions array — minItems: 1, maxItems: 4. All questions in the array render as one batched UI; one user round-trip per fire.

Per question:

• question — full sentence ending in ?
• header — short chip label, ≤ 12 characters
• multiSelect — boolean (default false). false = single-pick (mutually exclusive options); true = subset of additive items (feature toggles, optional sub-tasks)
• options — array, minItems: 2, maxItems: 4

Per option:

• label — 1-5 words; the chip text the user sees and ticks. Mark the recommended choice by appending (Recommended) to its label and placing it first in the array.
• description — explanation of the trade-off / consequence; the one-sentence rationale lives here.
• preview — optional rendered content (markdown, monospace box). Single-select only (tool constraint). Use for visual comparisons (layout mockups, code diffs, file trees); skip when the difference is purely conceptual.

Built-in escapes (do not duplicate):

• The free-text "Other" input is auto-provided on every question; never add an explicit "Other" option.
• Users may attach free-text notes via the annotations response field.

Plan-mode caveat:

• Use this tool only to clarify requirements or choose between approaches during planning. Do not ask "Is the plan ready?" / "Should I proceed?" — that's what ExitPlanMode is for.

Language-neutral examples

Rust — Plan: "Add a RetryClient wrapper around our HTTP client." Forks: error surface (panic on exhaustion vs Result<_, RetryError>), retry policy (fixed vs exponential vs jittered), cancellation (drop-as-cancel vs explicit CancellationToken), idempotency contract (caller-asserted vs key-derived). Walk in that order; recommend Result + jittered exponential + drop-as-cancel + caller-asserted.

Java / Spring Boot 3 — Plan: "Introduce a domain event bus for Order lifecycle." Forks: synchronous vs async dispatch, in-process vs broker (Kafka/RabbitMQ), at-least-once vs exactly-once semantics, ordering guarantees per aggregate, dead-letter handling. Walk parents first before children; recommend async + in-process for v1 with explicit upgrade path documented.

Forbidden: asking what the codebase already answers, accepting "I don't know" without parking the question.