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
The Brainstorming skill is a critical pre-implementation framework designed to bridge the gap between initial ideas and technical execution. It facilitates a structured, collaborative dialogue to explore user intent, define requirements, and evaluate architectural trade-offs. By enforcing a 'think-before-you-code' approach, it helps developers and architects create robust design specifications, minimize technical debt through YAGNI principles, and ensure that the final implementation aligns perfectly with project goals.
Use Cases
- Technical Specification Drafting: Transform vague feature requests into detailed design documents covering architecture, data flow, and error handling.
- Architectural Trade-off Analysis: Propose 2-3 different technical approaches for a problem, comparing pros and cons to find the most efficient solution.
- Requirement Refinement: Use iterative, one-question-at-a-time dialogue to clarify project constraints and success criteria before starting creative work.
- System Design Documentation: Automatically generate and commit structured design plans to a repository to serve as a source of truth for the development team.
| 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 set up for implementation?"
- Use superpowers: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