mindstorming

Mindstorming: Brainstorming for Knowledge Work

Overview

mindpowers does one loop: shape, draft, review, fact-check, and remember what you like. This skill is the "shape" step.

Help turn rough ideas into locked specs for knowledge-work deliverables (memos, business reviews, decision docs, PRDs, briefing docs, comms, frameworks, talking points, post-mortems) through Socratic dialogue.

The skill enforces a verbal design-approval gate and a final approval of the written spec on disk. For routine reuse of a prior locked spec, the user's explicit reuse instruction plus answers to every stated delta satisfies the verbal gate; do not ask for a second verbal approval. Drafting begins only after the applicable verbal gate and the written-spec approval.

Do NOT draft any deliverable, write any prose, or otherwise produce output until you have presented a design, written it to disk, and the user has approved the written spec. This applies to EVERY task regardless of perceived simplicity.

Anti-Pattern: "This is too simple to need a spec"

Every task goes through this process. A Slack reply, a one-paragraph note, a routine update, all of them. Simple tasks are where unexamined assumptions cause the most wasted work and miscommunication. The spec can be short (3-5 lines for trivially simple tasks), but you MUST write it and get user approval.

Shared Reasoning and Language Contract

Think precisely; respond plainly. In user-facing responses, prefer common words and short sentences. Explain an unavoidable technical term on first use. When a rule could be misunderstood, give one short, concrete example. If the user says an explanation is unclear, explain it again from scratch rather than defining the same jargon with more jargon.

For a material conclusion about evidence, readiness, a recommendation, or a blocker, give a compact reasoning receipt:

• the recommendation or conclusion;
• what you checked;
• the main reasons;
• what remains uncertain; and
• the next step.