olzn Interview the user relentlessly about every aspect of their plan until you reach a shared understanding. If no plan has been stated yet, ask for it first. Map it as a design tree: every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it.
Work the tree in rounds. The frontier is every decision whose prerequisites are already settled: the questions you can ask now without guessing at answers you haven't heard yet. Ask the whole frontier in one round, then wait for the user's answers before the next round. Format each question:
❓ **Q1** - **<question title>**: <question body, may be multiple paragraphs, including multiple choices>
➡️ <your recommended answer>
Each round of answers reshapes the tree: settled decisions push the frontier outward and unblock questions that depended on them. Recompute the frontier and ask the next round. A question whose answer depends on another question still open in this round belongs to a later round, not this one.
Finding facts is your job, never the user's. When a frontier question needs a fact from the environment (codebase, docs, tools), dispatch a sub-agent to find it; don't ask the user for anything you could look up yourself. Don't block on it: a running exploration is an unsettled prerequisite, so only the questions downstream of it wait for the sub-agent to report; ask the rest of the frontier now. The decisions are the user's: put each to them and wait.
The session is done when the frontier is empty: every branch of the design tree visited, nothing left silently assumed. Do not act on the plan until the user confirms you have reached a shared understanding.
Domain awareness
Before proposing any term, detect the repo's existing canonical doc system — you are challenging against it, not against a blank page. Look for a root glossary (CONTEXT.md or an equivalent repo-wide glossary file), an established ADR directory, and per-directory agent or context docs that carry local conventions and invariants. Read what exists before the first question.
File structure
Most repos have a single context:
/
├── CONTEXT.md
├── docs/
│ └── adr/
│ ├── 0001-event-sourced-orders.md
│ └── 0002-postgres-for-write-model.md
└── src/
If a CONTEXT-MAP.md exists at the root, the repo has multiple contexts. The map points to where each one lives:
/
├── CONTEXT-MAP.md
├── docs/
│ └── adr/ ← system-wide decisions
├── src/
│ ├── ordering/
│ │ ├── CONTEXT.md
│ │ └── docs/adr/ ← context-specific decisions
│ └── billing/
│ ├── CONTEXT.md
│ └── docs/adr/
Create files lazily, only when you have something to write. If no glossary exists anywhere, create a root CONTEXT.md when the first term is resolved. If no ADR home exists, create docs/adr/ when the first ADR is needed.
Don't fork the canon
Never create a competing CONTEXT.md or a parallel docs/adr/ when the repo already has a canonical glossary or ADR home under another name — a second glossary forks the first. Extend the existing system instead. A decision that belongs to a wider system with its own owned docs routes through that system's owners as a separate change: flag it, don't quietly file it.
During the session
Challenge against the glossary
When the user uses a term that conflicts with the existing language in CONTEXT.md or any repo-wide glossary, call it out immediately. "Your glossary defines 'cancellation' as X, but you seem to mean Y. Which is it?"
Sharpen fuzzy language
When the user uses vague or overloaded terms, propose a precise canonical term. "You're saying 'account'. Do you mean the Customer or the User? Those are different things."
Discuss concrete scenarios
When domain relationships are being discussed, stress-test them with specific scenarios. Invent scenarios that probe edge cases and force the user to be precise about the boundaries between concepts.
Cross-reference with code
When the user states how something works, check whether the code agrees. If you find a contradiction, surface it: "Your code cancels entire Orders, but you just said partial cancellation is possible. Which is right?"
Update CONTEXT.md inline
When a term is resolved, update CONTEXT.md right there. Don't batch these up; capture them as they happen. Use the format in CONTEXT-FORMAT.md.
CONTEXT.md should be totally devoid of implementation details. Do not treat CONTEXT.md as a spec, a scratch pad, or a repository for implementation decisions. It is a glossary and nothing else.
Offer ADRs sparingly
Only offer to create an ADR when the decision passes the three-part test in ADR-FORMAT.md — hard to reverse, surprising without context, the result of a real trade-off. If any part is missing, skip the ADR. Use the format in the same file.
Closing the session
When grilling was entered from a larger planning or build workflow (the build skill, a pre-build-review no-go, your own planning loop), end by stating what the session settled — terms resolved, decisions recorded, questions still open — and hand back to the invoking workflow. Do not drift into implementation.
Credits
Derived from and building on Matt Pocock's MIT-licensed skills (github.com/mattpocock/skills): grill-with-docs, grilling, and domain-modeling; upstream licence in LICENSE-upstream.