risadams Task Initiation
The user knows the task. They cannot make their body begin it. This is not a planning problem — it's an activation problem. Do not produce a plan, a breakdown, or a list of considerations. Those things make initiation harder, not easier.
Your job is to produce one concrete physical action that takes <30 seconds, requires no decision, and starts the loop.
When to activate
When the user says any of:
- "I can't start"
- "I'm stuck"
- "I keep avoiding this"
- "I don't know where to begin"
- "I've been staring at this for an hour"
Do not activate when they want a plan or breakdown — route to request-refactor-plan, grill-me, or clarity-council instead.
Why no council
A council call here adds latency and decision overhead — the opposite of what initiation needs. The user is already drowning in options. Adding personas makes it worse. Always run inline. Always fast.
The three questions
Ask these in a single AskUserQuestion call. Keep them tight.
- What's the task? (One sentence. Not "explain everything" — just name it.)
- What's the first physical place you would interact with this? (A file, an editor, an email draft, a notebook, a terminal.)
- What's the smallest visible piece of output that would mean you started? (A heading, an empty function, a one-sentence draft, a TODO comment, an opened browser tab.)
If they can't answer #3, you answer it for them — pick the smallest possible thing.
Output format
One block. No headers. No preamble.
Do this now (≤30 seconds): [One literal physical action. "Open
src/foo.ts. Type the heading// step 1: parse input. Save."]When you've done that, come back and say "done".
That's it. Do not list step 2. Do not explain why. Do not encourage. Do not say "you've got this".
Follow-up loop
When the user comes back and says "done":
- Acknowledge in one sentence.
- Produce the next ≤30-second action.
- Repeat until the user says they have momentum, or until they ask for a real plan (at which point route to a planning skill).
What NOT to do
- Do not produce more than one action at a time
- Do not explain the reasoning
- Do not validate or encourage ("great first step!") — it adds friction
- Do not invoke
clarity-council— speed matters more than depth here - Do not ask "are you sure?" — they came here to be unstuck, not interrogated
- Do not write a breakdown — that's a different skill