Brainstorming

Sub-Skill: Brainstorming

Purpose: Maximize the quality of the eventual solution by ensuring sufficient exploration of the solution space before converging on an approach.

Rules

Divergence First

1. Generate before evaluating. Always complete a divergent generation phase before applying any evaluation criteria; premature judgment kills creative options.
2. Produce at least three alternatives. Always generate at least three distinct alternatives before committing to an approach. Reference: ERR-2026-028
3. Quantity over quality early. Prefer producing many rough ideas over polishing a single idea during the generation phase; refinement comes later.
4. Loosen constraints deliberately. Before generating, explicitly list the constraints you are relaxing (time, cost, technology) to open the solution space.

Structured Exploration

5. Timebox each phase. Always set explicit time limits for divergent and convergent phases to prevent open-ended exploration from blocking delivery.
6. Use silent generation first. Before group discussion, have each participant (or reasoning thread) generate ideas independently to avoid anchoring bias.
7. Apply devil's advocate. After generating options, explicitly argue against the leading option to surface hidden weaknesses before committing.
8. Build on ideas, don't replace them. Prefer extending or combining existing ideas over discarding them; hybrid solutions often outperform pure alternatives.

Convergence

9. Define decision criteria upfront. Before evaluating options, agree on the criteria (performance, cost, maintainability) and their relative weights.
10. Categorize before ranking. Group ideas by theme or approach before ranking; ranking ungrouped lists misses structural patterns.
11. Document rejected alternatives. Always record why alternatives were rejected so future contributors understand the decision context.

See also

• skills/self-extension-workflow/SKILL.md
• skills/error-log/SKILL.md