Consultation

Consultation

Turn a vague ask — "ClientCo needs a new landing page", "we should refresh ClientCo's competitor set", "build me a skill that does X" — into a sharp, reviewed spec and a clean handoff, by interrogating the ask one question at a time and mapping what's known vs unknown.

This is the elicitation front-end our intake surface was missing. /discovery preps a human's prospect call; /proposal produces a doc from discovery notes; this skill is the interactive loop between a vague ask and a sharp spec.

When to run

Invoke when:

• "Scope this" / "turn this into a spec" / "help me think through [X]"
• A client or internal ask is genuinely vague or high-stakes and would otherwise surface gaps halfway through execution.
• You're about to enter plan mode on something underspecified.

Do NOT invoke when:

• The ask is already sharp — a one-line clarification does the job. Skip the loop.
• You need discovery-call prep (question bank for a human to ask a prospect) → client-discovery.
• You need the proposal document itself → client-proposals.
• You're pressure-testing a business idea for viability → business-brainstorm.

How it composes (do not reinvent these)

This skill is deliberately thin — it wires four existing Genesys systems into an elicitation loop:

If you find yourself writing a bespoke reviewer or a new plan format, stop — that's the anti-pattern this skill exists to avoid.

Inputs

If the ask is missing, ask for it in one line. If it's already fully specified, say so and skip to the handoff.

The loop

resolve working doc → questioning loop (gap-map) → draft spec → review (premortem) → handoff

1. Resolve the working doc. Client ask → projects/consulting/active/{client}/docs/MMYY-{topic}-consultation.md. Internal ask → a session scratchpad (or ~/.claude/plans/ if it's heading to plan mode). If a matching doc exists, ask continue-or-new. Seed it with the four-quadrant board below.
2. Run the questioning loop (details below) until no material unknown remains except client-accepted assumptions.
3. Draft the spec in planning-doctrine shape (Context → Goals → Outcome → Audience → Strategy → Use cases → Steps → Premortem → Resources).
4. Review — route the spec through /premortem --plan (and scope-guardian-reviewer if it's a client-facing scope). On BLOCKERS, never revise silently: bring each gap back as a numbered AskUserQuestion, update the board, redraft, re-review. Cap at 3 rounds, then present what remains and let the user decide.
5. Print the handoff — the delimited block below, with the real absolute spec path.

The four-quadrant gap board (the working doc)

The consultation doc maintains these named sections, updated before each next question:

• Brief — the ask in one paragraph, as currently understood.
• Known knowns — stated facts and constraints.
• Unknown knowns — implicit taste and preferences, surfaced by showing options (this is the move — when taste is hard to verbalize, show 2–4 concrete references and let the choice reveal the preference; lean on the taste-library / a1-gallery / brand-kit for real artifacts).
• Known unknowns — named open questions.
• Unknown unknowns — blind spots you surface through expertise, brain-first-lookup, or inspecting the target territory (the client folder, the live site, the existing skill).
• Decisions — what's been settled, dated.
• Next step — a copy-paste next action, so any sitting can resume.

Pre-seed the gap board. When the ask targets a known deliverable type, seed Known-unknowns with that deliverable's required inputs from the ontology — e.g. scoping a landing page pre-seeds "positioning locked? messaging locked? brand-kit present? primary CTA? proof points?"; scoping a competitor refresh pre-seeds "which competitors? which dimensions? aggregate or per-competitor?". The gap board then partly drains as a checklist.

The questioning loop

Repeat until no material unknown remains except client-accepted assumptions:

1. Pick the highest-leverage gap on the board.
2. Inspect before asking — run brain-first-lookup (recall → grep the client folder → read the path) to see if a fact or the territory already answers it. Don't ask the user what the workspace already knows.
3. Ask one question via AskUserQuestion — a single numbered question with 2–4 options, one clearly marked (Recommended), plus the implicit "Other". Lead with options and your recommendation; the client owns taste and the final call.
4. Update the board — quadrants, Decisions, Next step — before the next question.

Rules: one question at a time (never batch a wall of questions); stop at the handoff, never start building; end every sitting with the doc current and a copy-paste next step.

The spec (draft output)

The spec follows planning-doctrine canonical structure — not a bespoke format. Map the consultation into: Context (SQCA) · Goals · Outcome · Audience · Strategy · Use cases (named engagement + present-tense pain, per the use-cases doctrine) · Steps · Premortem (≥2 failure modes) · Resources. Client-facing scope docs additionally obey doc-output-structure.md.

The handoff prompt

After review passes, print this verbatim (replace the placeholder with the real absolute path):

---HANDOFF PROMPT START---
You are the execution session for the approved spec at `<absolute path to spec>`.

Read the spec and every reference it names. Implement it while preserving its
outcome, decisions, constraints, out-of-scope items, and open assumptions.
Inspect the target territory (client folder, live site, existing skill) before
changing it via brain-first-lookup; ask only if the spec leaves a true blocker.
Follow the relevant Genesys voice + doc rules, run /premortem --output before
ship, then report what changed, what passed, and any remaining risks.
---HANDOFF PROMPT END---

For an internal build that heads straight to plan mode, the "handoff" is simply: enter plan mode with this spec as the plan file.

Self-roast (run before handoff)

• Anti-hallucination: mark unknowns [PLACEHOLDER: …]; never invent a client constraint, metric, or preference the consultation didn't surface.
• Composition check: review ran through /premortem, not a bespoke reviewer; the spec is in planning-doctrine shape, not a home-grown format; questions used AskUserQuestion.
• Quality pass: the four quadrants are current; every Decision is dated; the Next step is copy-paste; the seven-tenet gate (output-tenets.md) passed.
• Skip check: if the ask was already sharp, did I avoid adding ceremony?

Integration with other skills

Attribution

The consultation-elicitation loop — the four-quadrant Known/Unknown gap board, one-question-at-a-time questioning, "surface implicit taste by showing options," "inspect before asking," "lead with options + a recommendation," "never revise silently," and the delimited handoff block — is adapted from the consultant skill in eliasstravik/skills (MIT, © Elias Stravik, accessed 2026-07-13). Concepts re-voiced; the review + plan-format stages are Genesys-native. See .claude/discovery/0726-eliasstravik-skills-steal-analysis.md.