brainstorming

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 and get user approval.

Why Design-First?

Presenting a design before implementation prevents several costly failure modes:

• Misaligned assumptions — Coding toward the wrong goal is expensive to unwind
• Scope creep — Design clarifies boundaries; implementation without it invites feature bloat
• Architecture rework — Early code often creates structural debt that compounds
• Wasted specialization — Implementation skills are powerful but wasteful without clear direction

This applies to every project, including simple ones. A todo list, single-function utility, or config change can all ship the wrong thing. The design can be concise for simple projects (a few sentences), but it should exist and be approved before implementation begins.

Anti-Pattern: "This Is Too Simple To Need A Design"

See Common Pitfall 1 below for the detailed failure mode and prevention steps.

Workflow

Work through these phases systematically. Each step builds on the previous one:

1. Explore project context — check files, docs, recent commits to ground the conversation in reality
2. Ask clarifying questions — one at a time, understand purpose/constraints/success criteria
3. Propose 2-3 approaches — with trade-offs and your recommendation to show you've considered alternatives
4. Present design — in sections scaled to their complexity, get user approval after each section
5. Write design doc — save to docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and commit to preserve decisions
6. Transition to implementation — invoke writing-plans skill to create the detailed implementation plan

Process Flow

digraph brainstorming {
    "Explore project context" [shape=box];
    "Ask clarifying questions" [shape=box];
    "Propose 2-3 approaches" [shape=box];
    "Present design sections" [shape=box];
    "User approves design?" [shape=diamond];
    "Write design doc" [shape=box];
    "Invoke writing-plans skill" [shape=doublecircle];

    "Explore project context" -> "Ask clarifying questions";
    "Ask clarifying questions" -> "Propose 2-3 approaches";
    "Propose 2-3 approaches" -> "Present design sections";
    "Present design sections" -> "User approves design?";
    "User approves design?" -> "Present design sections" [label="no, revise"];
    "User approves design?" -> "Write design doc" [label="yes"];
    "Write design doc" -> "Invoke writing-plans skill";
}