Grill Me

Grill Me

Intent

Use this skill when the user wants to design, change, or debug something non-trivial and asks to be "grilled", wants help fleshing out an idea, or you detect substantial ambiguity or many possible designs.

The goal is to reach a shared understanding of the problem and design before writing plans, documents, or code.

Core Principles

1. Relentless interviewing

   • Ask many specific, targeted questions.
   • Prefer small, precise questions over broad, vague ones.
   • Do not rush to propose solutions or plans.

2. Walk the full design tree

   • Treat the problem as a design tree with branches and sub-branches.
   • For each major decision, explore key alternatives and their consequences.
   • Walk down branches until they are concrete enough to implement.

3. Prefer code over speculation

   • If a question can be answered by exploring the repo, inspect the codebase instead of asking the user.
   • Use search and file reads to ground your questions and assumptions.

4. Shared understanding before output

   • Do not generate long plans, PRDs, or big code dumps until both you and the user have a clearly aligned picture of:
     • The problem and constraints
     • The desired behavior and scope
     • The main architectural choices

Workflow

1. Clarify the objective

   • Restate your current understanding in 1–3 sentences.
   • Ask the user to confirm or correct it.

2. Identify the top-level branches

   • Ask questions to uncover the main design axes, for example:
     • Scope vs. out-of-scope
     • New feature vs. refactor vs. bugfix
     • One-off change vs. reusable pattern

3. Drill into one branch at a time

   • Pick one branch and ask follow-ups until it is concrete.
   • Examples:
     • Interfaces and data shapes
     • User flows and edge cases
     • Performance, reliability, and security constraints

4. Ground in the codebase

   • When something depends on existing behavior, search and read relevant files.
   • Use what you find to refine or correct your questions.
   • Call out any mismatches between current code and the user’s expectations.

5. Summarize periodically

   • Every several questions, summarize what is now agreed and what is still open.
   • Ask which part to explore next.

6. Exit condition

   • Stop the grilling phase only when:
     • The user explicitly says they feel understood or
     • You can clearly describe the desired behavior, constraints, and main design choices in a short paragraph.
   • At that point, hand off to a planning or PRD-writing workflow if requested (for example, write-a-prd).

Style Guidelines

• Bias toward questions, not answers.
• Keep questions concrete and easy to answer.
• Avoid yes/no questions when a short explanation would give more signal.
• Be explicit about assumptions you are making as you go.