brainstorming

Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

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.

Production-Grade Doctrine applies with full force here — trade-offs are first chosen in brainstorming: you MUST NOT simplify a design by quietly cutting a required behavior; surface every material trade-off and let the user decide. Never weaken, bypass, or remove a security control — a security regression is never acceptable.

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

Every project goes through this process. A todo list, a single-function utility, a config change — all of them. "Simple" projects are where unexamined assumptions cause the most wasted work. The design can be short (a few sentences for truly simple projects), but you MUST present it and get approval.

Checklist

You MUST create the session bead + step children up front via bd import: first bd create "Brainstorming: <topic>" -t task (the permanent session bead — the audit trail; note its id), then author each checklist step as JSONL (one issue per line, "issue_type":"chore", an explicit "priority", id omitted, and a parent-child dep to the session id) and pipe to bd import -. Read bd import --help on first use; confirm the output shows no Skipped dependency. Cleanup: close each step bead as you complete it; if you abandon the brainstorm, close or bd purge the open steps (import children are permanent, not self-cleaning). Then complete the steps in order:

1. Explore project context — check files, docs, recent commits, and query the KB for prior decisions/research on the topic
2. Offer the visual companion just-in-time — NOT upfront. The first time a question would genuinely be clearer shown than described, offer it then (its own message); on approval its browser tab opens for you. If no visual question ever arises, never offer it. See the Visual Companion section below.
3. Ask clarifying questions — one at a time, understand purpose/constraints/success criteria
4. Propose 2-3 approaches — with trade-offs and your recommendation
5. Present design — in sections scaled to their complexity, get user approval after each section
6. Write design doc — save to .internal/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and commit
7. Spec self-review — quick inline check for placeholders, contradictions, ambiguity, scope (see below)
8. User reviews written spec — ask user to review the spec file before proceeding
9. Spec-review gate offers stress-test — the spec-review gate (step 8) includes an "Approved + stress-test" option, offered every time; if selected, invoke stress-test before writing-plans
10. Transition to implementation — invoke writing-plans skill to create implementation plan