brainstorming

A guided method for turning a vague idea into a clear technical design before building it. It classifies the work as simple, medium, or complex and adjusts the amount of planning and research accordingly.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan features, clarify requirements, research existing code patterns, compare design options, and create architecture documentation for larger changes.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of coding against unclear requirements or making architectural choices too early. It helps clarify goals, constraints, and trade-offs before implementation.

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/matrixfounder/agentic-development/brainstorming
Any agent
npx skills add MatrixFounder/Agentic-development --skill brainstorming
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MatrixFounder/Agentic-development

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 30 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,164 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 $0.00030 $0.01164
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00582
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00233
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00116

Measured 2d ago against content hash 474728fb2185, 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 2d 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.

.agent/skills/brainstorming/SKILL.md · 82 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 82 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Universal Brainstorming Protocol

Purpose: Bridge the gap between user intent ("Make it pop") and technical specification ("CSS Box Shadow"). Core Rule: Do NOT write code until you have a confirmed design (except for Trivial tasks).

Phase 1: Assess & Understand

1. Complexity Assessment (MANDATORY) At the start, classify the task to determine your mode:

Level Criteria Protocol Reference
TRIVIAL Clear requirements, standard pattern, single component (e.g., "Fix typo", "Add log"). Fast Path: Skip deep research. Confirm plan in chat. Go. examples/demo_trivial.md
MEDIUM Standard task but open details (e.g., "Add button", "Refactor function"). Standard: 1-2 clarifying questions, 2 options, brief confirmation. examples/demo_medium.md
COMPLEX High uncertainty, architectural impact, multiple components (e.g., "New System"). Deep Dive: Research -> Mermaid -> Trade-offs -> Design Doc -> Sign-off. examples/demo_complex.md

2. Context Gathering (Tool Agnostic)

  • Search: Use your environment's search capability (e.g., grep, search_code) to understand existing patterns.
    • Guardrail: IF NO SEARCH TOOLS EXIST, do NOT guess. Explicitly ask the user: "I cannot scan the repo. Could you share package.json and relevant files?"
  • Reading: Preferentially read task.md, README.md, or .cursorrules to align with project standards.

Phase 2: Explore & Visualize (The "How")

1. Smart Questions

  • Ask ONE critical question at a time.
  • Template: "To match your existing patterns for [X], do you prefer [Option A] or [Option B]?"

2. Visual Thinking

  • Constraint: For MEDIUM/COMPLEX tasks, you MUST visualize the flow.
  • Primary: Mermaid (Flowcharts/Sequence) only if confident the user's UI supports it.
  • Fallback: ASCII Art or Bullet Lists if the environment is restricted (e.g., standard terminal).

Read the full file on GitHub · 82 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 2d ago First seen · 82 lines · 30 tokens per session scan A 474728fb2185

Subscribe to this mod's changes

brainstorming is a skill published in the GitHub repository MatrixFounder/Agentic-development (5 stars, last pushed 19d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 30 tokens to every session and 1,164 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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