# Grill Me

> Adversarial relentless interview against any plan or design until shared understanding is reached. Walk the decision tree, resolve dependencies one answer at a time, recommend a default per question. Trigger when the user says "grill me", "stress-test this", "interview me about this design", or otherwise asks for hostile-but-fair scrutiny of a proposal. General-purpose — no domain anchor required.

- Skill: `outlinedriven-odin-gemini-cli-extension/grill-me` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add outlinedriven-odin-gemini-cli-extension/grill-me`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/outlinedriven-odin-gemini-cli-extension/grill-me/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: OutlineDriven (https://skillmd.com/u/outlinedriven-odin-gemini-cli-extension)
- Updated: 2026-09-10
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/outlinedriven-odin-gemini-cli-extension/grill-me

---


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

## Modality disambiguation [LOAD-BEARING]

Three adjacent skills — pick the right one before invoking.

| Skill | Shape | Anchor | Output | Use when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| *clarifying-question protocol* | VS-shaped — sample N intent hypotheses, rank, challenge each, then batch clarifying questions | None — pre-planning ambiguity | Survivor set + clarified scope | User intent is itself unclear |
| **this skill** | Linear adversarial interview, one question at a time, recommendation per question | None — design under test is the only anchor | Shared understanding, decision tree resolved | User has a plan/design and wants it stress-tested |
| *domain-model grilling* | Adversarial interview gated on documented domain language | `CONTEXT.md` + `docs/adr/` | Updated `CONTEXT.md` and/or new ADR | Project has documented domain language to honour |

**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.
- 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.

## 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: batching dependent questions, asking what the codebase already answers, accepting "I don't know" without parking the question.