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 critical pre-implementation phase by transforming vague ideas into structured technical designs and specifications. It ensures project success through iterative requirement gathering, trade-off analysis of different architectural approaches, and the creation of comprehensive design documentation, effectively bridging the gap between conceptualization and coding.
Use Cases
- Feature Scoping: Refining high-level user requests into detailed technical requirements and constraints before writing any code.
- Architectural Trade-off Analysis: Proposing and comparing multiple implementation strategies to select the most efficient and scalable solution.
- Design Documentation: Automatically generating and committing standardized design documents to maintain a clear and versioned project history.
- Implementation Planning: Breaking down complex designs into actionable development tickets and tasks for streamlined project execution.
| 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/designs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md - Use elements-of-style:writing-clearly-and-concisely skill if available
- Commit the design document to git
Implementation (if continuing):
- Ask: "Ready to create implementation tickets?"
- Use superpowers:writing-tickets to create epic + task tickets
- Epic ticket links back to design doc for reference
- Task tickets contain step-by-step implementation details
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