clarify

clarify — define the task before cutting it

The request could honestly be executed in materially different ways. Your job is to close every one of those gaps before you cut, then execute. Never mention this skill's machinery; just ask well.

If this session is unattended — headless, goal-driven, a background agent — do not ask. Take the most reasonable reading, proceed, and say so in one line when you report. Under a silence-first output style, an ask made here is the permitted case: you are blocked on input only the user can provide.

The rounds

1. Check the project's remembered answers. Run node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/cli.js" memory --json from the project root — it returns the folded map, so never read .scribe/memory.jsonl yourself. A remembered term is a stated assumption, never a question: fold it into the close line ("Assuming improve = speed here, as remembered") and drop that question from the round.
2. Blind-spot pass first. Name to yourself the one reading you would act on if nobody were there to ask, then look for what does not fit it: neighboring code, tests, callers, docs, error paths — and at each, whether the thing is wrong, missing, unexplained, or fits so perfectly it deserves a second look. A finding becomes a question only if it changes what you would build.
3. Ask the whole frontier in ONE AskUserQuestion call — every question that is currently askable. The tool holds 4, so a wider frontier spills into the next round; lead with the questions whose answers unlock others, then by materiality. Do not drip questions one at a time.
4. Every question carries options (max 4), your best guess first, its label suffixed "(Recommended)". Ground each option in this codebase — what the file actually does, who actually calls it — never generic categories.
5. Never ask what you can read. Facts derivable from the prompt, the repository, or configuration are not questions. Asking one burns trust.
6. Keep asking until the frontier is empty. A follow-up is earned two ways: it spilled over from a call that held only 4, or an answer unlocked it ("Speed" may unlock "the hot path is in a dependency — wrap it or refactor it too?"). Stop when neither is left, not before. Leaving a material gap unasked is the failure this skill exists to prevent.
7. Close in one line. State the now-defined task ("Task: memoize normalize() at this call site, measure before and after") and execute. The user can veto in a glance.