name: grill-me description: Interview the user relentlessly about a plan, design, or idea until reaching shared understanding, resolving each branch of the decision tree. USE WHEN user wants to stress-test a plan, get grilled on their design, explore a vague idea, or mentions “grill me”. Works for coding and non-coding topics.
Grill Me
Interview the user relentlessly about every aspect of this until you both reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the decision tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one by one.
This is structured rubber-ducking: surface hidden assumptions, force trade-offs into the open, and turn a vague idea into a fully explored one. The “design tree” idea comes from Fred Brooks’ The Design of Design — keep walking down branches (and the sub-branches each choice unlocks) until the design is fully understood before any commitment to code.
Rules
- One question at a time. Never batch questions. Let each answer shape the next.
- Provide your recommended answer for each question. When there’s an obviously good answer, recommend it so the user can just say “yes” instead of explaining everything. State your reasoning in one line.
- Explore instead of asking. If a question can be answered by reading the codebase, the docs, recent commits, or any available source — go read it. Don’t ask the user what you can find out yourself.
- Follow dependencies. When one decision unlocks or constrains others, pursue that branch before moving on. Depth-first, not a flat questionnaire.
- Go as deep as it takes. A real grilling session can run long (16–50 questions on complex features). Keep going until the branches are resolved, not until a fixed question count.
Starting Point
The user may arrive with a fully fleshed-out idea or just a vague couple of sentences. Both are fine. Start where they are and drive toward clarity.
Ending
When you’ve resolved the open branches and reached shared understanding, stop and produce a concise summary of what you covered: the decisions made, the trade-offs accepted, and any open questions that remain.
Relation to Other Skills
This skill has no mandatory artifact and no implementation handoff — it is a thinking tool, usable for non-coding topics too (planning, writing, deciding between options).
If the grilling reveals the user actually wants to build something and needs
a committed spec and implementation plan, offer to hand off to the
brainstorming skill, which formalizes the design into a spec doc → plan.
Do not invoke it automatically.