brainstorming
You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.
When & Why to Use This Skill
This Claude skill facilitates the transition from raw ideas to structured technical designs. It ensures project success by systematically exploring user intent, refining requirements through collaborative dialogue, and producing comprehensive architecture specifications before any code is written. By focusing on 'design-first' principles, it helps developers and product managers avoid technical debt and ensure alignment with project goals.
Use Cases
- New Feature Planning: Defining the architecture and data flow for a new software module to ensure scalability and alignment with user needs before implementation.
- Technical Requirement Refinement: Converting vague business requests into detailed technical specifications through a guided, one-question-at-a-time Q&A process.
- System Architecture Design: Evaluating multiple technical approaches and trade-offs for complex systems, resulting in a documented design plan in markdown format.
- Collaborative Brainstorming: Using AI to explore alternative design patterns and 'YAGNI' principles to simplify project scope and focus on core functionality.
| name | brainstorming |
|---|---|
| description | "You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation." |
Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs
Overview
Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.
Start by understanding the current project context, then ask questions one at a time to refine the idea. Once you understand what you're building, present the design in small sections (200-300 words), checking after each section whether it looks right so far.
The Process
Understanding the idea:
- Check out the current project state first (files, docs, recent commits)
- Ask questions one at a time to refine the idea
- Prefer multiple choice questions when possible, but open-ended is fine too
- Only one question per message - if a topic needs more exploration, break it into multiple questions
- Focus on understanding: purpose, constraints, success criteria
Exploring approaches:
- Propose 2-3 different approaches with trade-offs
- Present options conversationally with your recommendation and reasoning
- Lead with your recommended option and explain why
Presenting the design:
- Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design
- Break it into sections of 200-300 words
- Ask after each section whether it looks right so far
- Cover: architecture, components, data flow, error handling, testing
- Be ready to go back and clarify if something doesn't make sense
After the Design
Documentation:
- Write the validated design to
docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md - Use elements-of-style:writing-clearly-and-concisely skill if available
- Commit the design document to git
Implementation (if continuing):
- Ask: "Ready to continue with implementation planning?"
- Use writing-plans to create detailed implementation plan
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 in sections, validate each
- Be flexible - Go back and clarify when something doesn't make sense