brainstorming

name: brainstormingdescription: "Use when defining ambiguous or high-complexity new features, product behavior, UI/component design, architecture choices, contract changes, or when grilling/pressure-testing a plan or design. Routine small requests stay on the fast path."

Execute

→ Direct grilling or plan/design pressure-test? → Enter Grilling Mode below. Soft challenge intent? → Use its one-line mode confirmation. Do not start normal design artifacts, document writing, task planning, or implementation during the interview. → New feature, product behavior, UI/component design, architecture/contract change, or ambiguous medium/high-complexity work? → Design first. No implementation until the needed design/spec is approved.

1. Explore project context → read authority docs, check for existing patterns
2. Ask clarifying questions one at a time (prefer multiple choice)
3. Propose 2-3 approaches with trade-offs and your recommendation
4. Present design sections → get user approval after each
5. Write spec → self-review → user review → transition to writing-plans → HARD GATE: For tasks that match this skill, do NOT write code, scaffold projects, or invoke implementation skills until design/spec approval is satisfied.

Route Fixtures

These rows are calibration expectations for method behavior, not a runtime regex router. The Agent selects the route from evidence; route selection is not a user question.

Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.

Start by understanding the current project context and authority boundary, then ask questions one at a time to refine the idea. Once you understand what you're building, present the smallest design artifact that stabilizes the work and get the required approval.

Define success as the user's usable result, including delivery and meaningful failure states. Separate real business/authorization constraints from current implementation limits; an unsupported action remains an unmet need. Balance this request with reliability across supported scenarios, without expanding its scope. Existing approval satisfies unchanged decisions; clarify only gaps that affect the design or authorization.

Grilling Mode

Mode Precedence

While Grilling Mode is active, it overrides the normal brainstorming execution flow. Suspend Checklist, The Process, the Compact output contract, and all documentation or design-transition requirements until the user exits the interview; retain the no-implementation hard gates.

Grilling Entry Signals

• Direct: The user asks to grill or interrogate an idea, plan, or design, or explicitly requests a pressure-test. Direct phrases include grill me, grill this plan, 审问我, 盘问我, and 拷问我. Enter the mode immediately.
• Soft: The user asks to challenge assumptions, find holes, red-team, or "别顺着我" about a draft idea, plan, or design. Ask only: Grill or normal brainstorming? Enter the mode only after confirmation.
• Not grilling: A bare/literal phrase reference, or a PR, diff, or current-code review. Explain literal phrases normally; route implementation review to requesting-code-review.

Opening Card

After the user enters the mode, emit the one-time opening card exactly as specified in grilling-mode-reference.md, then begin the interview.

Pace

• Deep: Ask exactly one decision question per turn when it is blocking or depends on the previous answer. State the recommended answer and the most relevant trade-off before waiting.
• Fast: Only when the user explicitly asks for a fast or batched interview (for example, fast, batch, 快问, or 一次问几个), ask at most three independent decision questions. Give each question its recommendation and trade-off, then wait for the user's responses. Return to deep pace for dependent follow-ups.

1. Explore the codebase and current authority docs for facts before asking. Do not ask the user for facts that can be found locally.
2. The user owns the decision. Do not treat a recommendation, a tentative answer, or a shared-understanding checkpoint as final approval.
3. Aside from the one-time opening card, keep the turn to the observation, recommendation, and the selected pace's questions. Do not emit a full design ceremony, write docs, create a plan, or implement while the interview is active.
4. End when the user says to stop, defer, or that the questions are sufficient. Reconfirm in a structured Challenge Result. That summary does not grant completion authority.

Challenge Result
- Survived assumptions
- Rejected assumptions
- New evidence needed
- Design changes required
- Residual risks
- Return state: interview | design | approaches | writing-plans

5. If the user asks to proceed after the interview, return to the normal brainstorming design gate. A design/spec still needs the required approval before planning or implementation.

Route Away / Doc Necessity Gate

Do not force this workflow onto low-complexity work. A tiny wording edit, single-owner bug fix, simple config/status question, local utility change, or mechanical multi-file change can proceed through concise intent, baseline check, TDD/debugging, and verification without any new document. Run the Doc Necessity Gate before writing any spec, plan, ADR, or baseline artifact:

1. Does an existing spec/plan/ADR/baseline already cover this change surface? -> Update that owner document in place; never create a sibling document.
2. Is the surface durable/irreversible (schema, public API, owner, dependency direction, migration, compat-path retirement), cross-session/cross-person handoff, approval-gated, or authority-required? -> Yes: write the smallest artifact for that surface (see Documentation). -> No: write no document; keep compact drafts in-session.
3. Re-check at edit time and at closeout; escalate to the smallest stabilizing spec if uncertainty or impact grows.

Route Precedence

1. Route-away cases leave this workflow first (systematic-debugging, requesting-code-review, goal-framing when goal intent is explicit, fast-path micro-tasks).
2. Grilling Mode requires explicit challenge intent. Ordinary discussion, evaluation, or the need to clarify understanding is not grilling.
3. Otherwise run the normal brainstorming flow and escalate depth on evidence: contracts, owners, persistence, migration, security, consumer count, or blast radius. Escalate after evidence, not merely because the first request sounds ambitious.
4. File count alone is not a design signal: a mechanical multi-file change can still be fast-path, and a one-file contract change can still be full design.

Role And Authority Contract

Agent-owned decisions

Resolve these directly without asking the user:

• repository investigation strategy and evidence gathering order
• file and function organization inside an accepted owner
• testing commands and proportional verification mechanics
• inline versus subagent execution when policy already allows it
• reversible implementation structure that does not change product behavior, contract, authority, or durable boundaries

User-owned decisions

Ask the user only for:

• product behavior or preference
• irreversible, destructive, external, public, production, or sensitive impact
• explicit product/contract commitments only the user can make
• necessary information unavailable from repository, tools, and authority docs

Every user question must pass this test:

If the user chooses another answer, which design boundary, behavior, owner, acceptance criterion, or risk decision changes?

If none changes, do not ask. When a question passes this test, attach a recommended option and the reason for it, so the user decides between framed choices instead of researching. This classification clarifies which decisions are user-owned; it does not remove the approval points this workflow already defines.

Checklist

You MUST create a task for each of these items and complete them in order:

1. Explore project context — check files, docs, recent commits, authority docs, and passively consume relevant active CONTEXT.md language without loading active modeling
2. Choose the path and scope — real design? diagnosis? route accordingly or decompose first
3. Ask clarifying questions — one at a time, understand purpose/constraints/success criteria
4. Draft working artifacts — TaskIntentDraft, BaselineReadSetHint, BaselineUsageDraft, ImpactStatementDraft
5. Run existence check when adding new surfaces — only if an approach adds a new owner, skill, artifact, adapter, fallback, workflow step, or benchmark metric
6. Propose 2-3 approaches — with trade-offs and your recommendation
7. Present design — in sections scaled to complexity, get user approval where required
8. Write spec artifact — only after the Doc Necessity Gate passes and no existing owner spec/plan covers the surface; if covered, update that document instead of creating a sibling
9. Spec self-review — check for placeholders, contradictions, ambiguity, scope, boundary
10. User reviews written spec — ask user to review before proceeding
11. Transition to implementation — invoke writing-plans skill (terminal state)

The terminal state is invoking writing-plans. Do NOT invoke any other implementation skill.

The Process

Understanding the idea:

• Check current project state first (files, docs, recent commits)
• Read relevant authority docs before asking deep questions
• Use existing canonical terms in questions, options, scenarios, and the spec. If terminology crystallizes or conflicts, compose establishing-project-context; do not leave the resolution only in the spec.
• If the request is diagnosis/root-cause/follow-up to an approved plan → route to correct workflow
• If the request spans multiple independent subsystems → flag and decompose first

Working artifacts: keep the four drafts named by the compact output contract and refresh them when scope changes. TaskIntentDraft carries outcome, goal, success evidence, stop condition, non-goals, scope, and risks; BaselineReadSetHint carries candidate docs and authority gaps; BaselineUsageDraft carries required, delivered-context, acknowledged-before-plan, cited, and missing refs plus the advisory decision; ImpactStatementDraft carries affected layers, owners, invariants, compat, and non-goals.

Compact output contract: Aegis Visibility, TaskIntentDraft, BaselineReadSetHint, BaselineUsageDraft, Requirement Ready Check, ImpactStatementDraft, Existence Check, Product Risk Lens, Architecture Integrity Lens, Prior-Art & Reuse Lens, Baseline Role Alignment, Plan-Time Complexity Check, Options, and Decision Needed. Use this compact shape before expanding into a full design structure.

Aegis Visibility for this workflow names why design/spec clarification comes before implementation and what drift, overbuild, wrong-owner, or missing acceptance risk that restraint reduces. Keep it natural and task-specific; do not turn it into a fixed skill trace.

Exploring approaches: Propose 2-3 approaches with trade-offs and recommendation. Make scope boundary explicit: what's in, what's deferred, what belongs elsewhere.

Before approach selection, use Existence Check for any proposed new surface. Escalate to first-principles-review and its Decision Hygiene Review when the candidate direction still introduces a new owner, duplicate owner, fallback, adapter, compat-only carrier, delete-first question, unverified assumption, or "long-term stable" claim after the existence check. Do not make either check a universal design ceremony; return to this workflow once the decision surface is clean.

When the central decision is internal retirement vs compat retention vs persistent-state confirmation, compose anti-entropy-governance. It classifies the deletion target, chooses delete-first | compat-exception | confirmation-first, and keeps destructive authority outside the design skill.

Use the narrower Architecture Integrity Lens when the main risk is not broad strategy but architecture coherence: unclear canonical owner, responsibility overlap, caller-side fallback, stale path carrying real logic, or a possible higher-level owner / contract / source-of-truth simplification. The lens should answer invariant, canonical owner / contract, responsibility overlap, higher-level simplification, retirement / falsifier, and verdict before the approach is recommended.

Presenting the design: Scale sections to complexity. Cover only the surfaces that matter: architecture, components, data flow, error handling, testing, compatibility boundary. Get approval for the design before implementation when behavior, contract, architecture, or user-facing flow is being decided.

ADR signals: When the design/spec touches durable architecture surfaces (owner, public contract, artifact shape, dependency direction, source-of-truth, host compatibility, runtime-ready boundary, fallback, adapter, or retirement schedule), mark the ADR signal, source refs, real alternatives, and expected baseline-sync question for later completion. Do not create accepted architecture memory from unexecuted ideas.

Design for isolation: Each unit = one clear purpose, well-defined interface, testable independently. Can someone understand it without reading internals? Can you change internals without breaking consumers?

Existing codebases: Follow existing patterns. Include targeted improvements only when they serve the current goal. If the design touches contracts, compat, fallbacks, or duplicated owners → call it out directly.

Conditional Detailed Guidance

Load only the evidence-matched section, never either file whole, and never for route selection, first-turn clarification, route-away cases, or an active Grilling Mode interview.

expanded-design-guidance.md owns these sections; read only the activated one:

• ## Design Artifact Templates — the template for the single artifact the current evidence activates (Baseline Usage Draft, Requirement Ready Check, Existence Check, Product Risk Lens, Plan-Time Complexity Check, Prior-Art And Reuse Lens, Baseline Role Alignment);
• ## Design Probe;
• ## Software Scenario Profiles — only after the scenario class is known;
• ## Documentation And Workspace Bootstrap — only after the Doc Necessity Gate selects a spec or workspace artifact;
• ## Spec Self-Review — only for a written Design Spec; and
• a named baseline template — only when initializing that exact file.

For user-facing interface or interaction design, compose ui-ux-governance and carry scoped experience rules into the existing acceptance criteria. Routing, design approval, and handoff stay with this skill.

Design Ready And Design Complete

Approach selection is ready when:

• the desired outcome and primary scenario are known;
• scope and non-goals are explicit;
• current behavior and the target delta are grounded;
• key invariants and the likely canonical owner are identified;
• at least one observable acceptance criterion exists;
• no open unknown can still change the approach category.

Not every unknown must be eliminated; only decision-changing unknowns block convergence.

The design can hand off when all applicable conditions hold:

• the selected approach and canonical owner are explicit;
• fixed behavior/contract and implementation-owned choices are separated;
• alternatives were materially compared or excluded by evidence;
• critical assumptions have evidence or explicit acceptance;
• failure/recovery and consumer impact are covered where applicable;
• acceptance criteria are observable and usable by verification;
• new owners, fallbacks, adapters, compatibility, or persistence have creation proof and retirement/rollback treatment;
• every user-owned decision has real user approval.

Design Complete is method readiness, not completion authority. Transition to writing-plans only after these conditions hold; do not carry unresolved decision-changing unknowns into the plan.

After the Design

After approval, Write the validated spec artifact when needed. If the Doc Necessity Gate selects workspace or spec documentation, read the applicable sections of expanded-design-guidance.md; otherwise keep the accepted design in-session. When workspace support is selected, its helper remains outside the target project and is invoked as <aegis-workspace-helper>.

Aegis Project Workspace: workspace creation and spec persistence remain conditional on the Doc Necessity Gate and project authority.

For a Design Spec, complete its self-review and obtain explicit user review before planning. Apply requested changes and review again. A small Spec Brief that only pins medium-task acceptance may use concise review unless project authority requires a formal gate.

Implementation:

• Invoke the writing-plans skill to create a detailed implementation plan
• Do NOT invoke any other skill. writing-plans is the next step.

Key Principles

• One question at a time - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions
• Multiple choice preferred - Easier to answer than open-ended when possible
• YAGNI ruthlessly - Remove unnecessary features from all designs
• Explore alternatives - Always propose 2-3 approaches before settling
• Incremental validation - Present design, get approval before moving on
• Be flexible - Go back and clarify when something doesn't make sense