brainstorming

Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

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

Start by understanding the current project context, 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.

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.

Checklist

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

1. Explore project context — check files, docs, recent commits
2. Ask clarifying questions — one at a time, understand purpose/constraints/success criteria
3. Propose 2-3 approaches — with trade-offs and your recommendation
4. Present design — in sections scaled to their complexity, get user approval after each section
5. Write design doc — save to docs/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and commit
6. Spec self-review — quick inline check for placeholders, contradictions, ambiguity, scope
7. User reviews written spec — ask user to review the spec file before proceeding
8. Transition to implementation — invoke writing-plans skill to create implementation plan

Process Flow

graph TD
    Explore["Explore project context"]
    Ask["Ask clarifying questions"]
    Propose["Propose 2-3 approaches"]
    Present["Present design sections"]
    ApproveDesign{"User approves design?"}
    WriteDoc["Write design doc"]
    SpecReview["Spec self-review<br/>(fix inline)"]
    ReviewSpec{"User reviews spec?"}
    InvokePlans((("Invoke writing-plans skill")))

    Explore --> Ask
    Ask --> Propose
    Propose --> Present
    Present --> ApproveDesign
    ApproveDesign -->|"no, revise"| Present
    ApproveDesign -->|"yes"| WriteDoc
    WriteDoc --> SpecReview
    SpecReview --> ReviewSpec
    ReviewSpec -->|"changes requested"| WriteDoc
    ReviewSpec -->|"approved"| InvokePlans