Brainstorming

Resolve material scope or behavior decisions before committing to an approach.

Route before grounding

• Clear, bounded behavior: return to the task; no interview or spec is required.
• One routine missing detail: infer from relevant code or ask one focused question, then continue independent work.
• Several live directions: use references/exploration.md when structured divergence would help.
• Requested interview: use the grilling skill. A written critique is a review, not automatic permission to interview or edit documents.
• Decisions already settled: synthesize them without reopening the discussion.

Read only the relevant existing code, authoritative docs and constraints needed to distinguish the live choices. Name the closest existing solution before proposing a new one.

Resolve

Establish outcome, intended user, success criteria, constraints and exclusions. Present materially different options with tradeoffs when alternatives remain. Ask about consequential unresolved choices; group independent questions when that is easier to answer. Carry prior decisions and authorization forward. For interview technique or an explanation that benefits from a picture, consult references/interviewing.md or references/visuals.md, respectively.

Stop exploring when a direction and its acceptance criteria are sufficient for the next authorized step. Do not invent more questions or variants to fill a quota.

Record and hand off

An in-chat decision is enough for bounded work unless a durable artifact was requested. For a spec that planning or another session will consume, use references/spec-template.md; default path is docs/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md. Record sources, assumptions and excluded alternatives as needed for handoff.

A new unresolved spec is Status: draft. Mark it Status: approved only when actual authorization covers its direction and scope, recording that evidence. Approval names the chosen direction; re-ask vague assent as a choice between two concrete options. A blocking question must be resolved or explicitly excluded before approval. Review consistency, scope and verifiability; a spec with material risk gets a critic review (review skill) before approval. Report an unresolved direction as a blocker to whoever started the brainstorm.

This skill's output is decisions or a spec. Continue into planning/execution when already authorized; a brainstorming-only request does not authorize code changes.