# Grill Me

> Interview the user relentlessly about a plan or design until reaching shared understanding. Phase 2b gate of /development-lifecycle. Spawns 3 parallel reviewer hats (product/engineering/design) to stress-test the plan. Use when user wants to stress-test a plan, get grilled, or mentions "grill me".

- Skill: `redpanda-data/grill-me` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add redpanda-data/grill-me`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/redpanda-data/grill-me/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: redpanda-data (https://skillmd.com/u/redpanda-data)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/redpanda-data/grill-me

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# Grill Me

Phase 2b gate. No implementation until plan survive grilling.

## Step 1: Interview

Walk every branch of decision tree. Resolve dependencies one-by-one. Each question, give recommended answer. One at time.

If question answerable by exploring codebase, explore first.

## Step 2: Three-Hat Fan-Out (parallel)

Once user present coherent plan, spawn three reviewers **in parallel** (single message, multiple Agent tool calls):

- **`plan-product-hat`**: persona, pain, success metric, scope, reversibility, TTV
- **`plan-engineering-hat`**: architecture, error paths, perf, security, test strategy, rollback
- **`plan-design-hat`**: flow, a11y, copy, visual consistency, states (empty/loading/error)

Each emit `{reviewer, status, findings[], must_answer[]}` per findings-schema.md.

## Step 3: Merge

Consolidate all `must_answer` questions into single list, deduped. Surface to user. User answer each. Plan updated inline.

Any reviewer return `status: BLOCKED` -> plan no advance until blocking finding addressed or user override.

## Step 4: Approve

All hats return `APPROVED` or user override specific findings -> plan approved -> Phase 3 (Implement).

## Skip Gate

Skip three-hat fan-out only if:
- Trivial bug fix, AND
- <3 tasks in plan, AND
- No architectural / product / UX decisions

Else, fan-out mandatory. [ETHOS: Grill Before Build]