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
This Claude skill facilitates the transition from abstract concepts to concrete technical designs through a structured, collaborative dialogue. It specializes in refining rough ideas into fully-formed specifications by exploring architectural alternatives, validating components incrementally, and ensuring technical rigor before the implementation phase begins.
Use Cases
- Feature Specification: Converting high-level product requirements into detailed technical designs, covering architecture, data flow, and error handling.
- Architectural Trade-off Analysis: Proposing and evaluating multiple technical approaches for a system component to identify the most efficient and scalable solution.
- Pre-implementation Planning: Refining vague project ideas through iterative questioning to ensure all constraints and success criteria are defined before writing code.
- Design Documentation: Automatically generating and committing validated design documents to a repository to maintain a clear 'source of truth' for the engineering team.
| 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 - Use elements-of-style:writing-clearly-and-concisely skill if available
- Commit the design document to git
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