brainstorming

A conversation-led design process for turning an idea into a clear software specification before implementation begins.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to clarify goals, study relevant context, ask focused questions, and agree on what should be built.
Why use it?
It prevents coding from starting with unclear requirements or hidden assumptions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/humanbean17/jrag/brainstorming
Any agent
npx skills add HumanBean17/jrag --skill brainstorming
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/HumanBean17/jrag

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,892 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00038 $0.02892
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.01446
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00578
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00289

Measured 3d ago against content hash 0d3bd709129d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

brainstorming scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/skills/brainstorming/SKILL.md · 190 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 190 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.

Start by reading the context the user gave you, then study the codebase, 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.

Core Principles

These principles override the rest of this skill when in conflict.

  1. Context before code. Before exploring the codebase, carefully read the context the user provided - the task description, linked tickets, attached files, references, and any constraints stated in the message. Only then explore the code. The design must reflect what the user actually asked for, not what you assume.
  2. Specs carry design, not code. The spec describes WHAT to build and WHY, with references to classes, methods, fields, configurations, tables, DTOs, and contracts (JSON Schema, schemas, config). It MUST NOT contain implementation logic - method bodies, algorithms, or actual code. Writing code is the job of the agent that implements the plan. Your job here is to design.

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. What's optional is the written spec (see below) — the design conversation itself never is.

Checklist

You MUST create a task for each of these items and complete them in order:

  1. Read the provided context - the task description, linked tickets, attachments, and any constraints the user stated. Parse intent and boundaries before touching the codebase
  2. Explore project context — check files, docs, recent commits
  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. Ask whether to write a spec — once the design is approved, mark all previous tasks (1-5) as completed, then ask the user. The design conversation is mandatory; the spec document is not. For trivial changes the approved design alone may be enough; for anything non-trivial, default to writing one.
    • No spec → mark all brainstorming tasks complete, then proceed to implementation (no spec doc, no plan).
    • Yes spec → continue to steps 7-11.
  7. Template fit check — if a project-level docs/superpowers/spec-template.md exists, map the approved design onto it; surface every mismatch in one message and ask before deviating. Skip if absent. See Custom Spec Template.
  8. Write design doc — save to docs/superpowers/specs/active/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and commit
  9. Spec self-review — quick inline check for placeholders, contradictions, ambiguity, scope (see below)
  10. User reviews written spec — ask user to review the spec file before proceeding
  11. Transition to implementation — invoke writing-plans skill to create implementation plan

Read the full file on GitHub · 190 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 190 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A 0d3bd709129d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

brainstorming is a skill published in the GitHub repository HumanBean17/jrag (9 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 2,892 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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check

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