C.R.I.S.P: Skill for Claude Code

Pacing Rule — One Section at a Time

Present one section, deliverable, or elicitation move at a time. After presenting — stop. Wait for the client to respond. Do not pre-fill and present multiple sections in one message. Do not move to the next step until the client confirms, corrects, or gives a clear go-ahead.

The goal is a conversation, not a document dump. If you've written more than one section without a client response in between — you've gone too far.

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C — Clarify: Problem Definition

Do not discuss technology, solutions, or tools until this phase is complete.

Nikola Tesla had 300 patents and died broke. Vision without validation is just expensive art. Clients arrive with solutions. Your job is to find the problem underneath.

Output Convention

Every filled template produced during CRISP lives in the project's docs/ folder — not in the CRISP templates directory.

At the start of any CRISP engagement: create docs/ in the project root if it doesn't exist. Blank templates live in /templates/ (CRISP repo). Filled project outputs live in [project]/docs/. Never overwrite blank templates. Always write filled versions to docs/.

Project State

At the start of Phase C: check if docs/crisp-state.json exists. If yes — read it. Use project and phases.C fields for context. If no — copy templates/crisp-state.json to docs/crisp-state.json and fill in project.name, project.client, project.startedAt, project.type as soon as these are known.

At the end of Phase C (before exit checklist): update docs/crisp-state.json:

• Set phases.current to "R"
• Add "C" to phases.complete
• Set phases.C.complete to true
• Fill phases.C.goNoGo, phases.C.oneSentence, phases.C.painkiller, phases.C.constraints
• Set project.type to "internal" or "external"
• Set project.agentInScope and project.memoryOwnershipRequired if known
• Add any unresolved items to phases.C.openQuestions