brainstorming
Use when creating or developing, before writing code or implementation plans - refines rough ideas into fully-formed designs through collaborative questioning, alternative exploration, and incremental validation. Don't use during clear 'mechanical' processes
When & Why to Use This Skill
The Brainstorming skill is a collaborative design assistant that transforms rough concepts into comprehensive technical specifications. It employs a structured, iterative questioning process to explore architectural alternatives, evaluate trade-offs, and incrementally validate designs, ensuring a solid foundation and clear implementation path before any code is written.
Use Cases
- Initial Project Ideation: Converting vague feature requests or rough ideas into structured design documents with clear architecture, components, and data flows.
- Architectural Trade-off Analysis: Proposing and comparing 2-3 different technical approaches for a new system module to determine the most efficient and scalable solution.
- Requirement Refinement: Using guided, one-at-a-time questioning to uncover hidden constraints, edge cases, and success criteria early in the development lifecycle.
- Automated Design Documentation: Generating standardized design plans and automatically committing them to the project repository (e.g., docs/plans/) to maintain a single source of truth.
| name | brainstorming |
|---|---|
| description | Use when creating or developing, before writing code or implementation plans - refines rough ideas into fully-formed designs through collaborative questioning, alternative exploration, and incremental validation. Don't use during clear 'mechanical' processes |
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 - Commit the design document to git
Implementation (if continuing):
- Ask: "Ready to set up for implementation?"
- Use the
writing-plansskill to create a 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 if something doesn't make sense