brainstorminglisted

Help shape a vague idea into a concrete, agreed design before anything gets built. The work is collaborative and conversational: understand what the user actually wants, surface the decisions hidden inside the request, weigh approaches together, and write the result down. The goal is a design the user has explicitly approved — not code, and not a plan yet. ## Don't jump to implementation Hold off on writing code, scaffolding a project, or invoking any build/plan skill until you've presented a design and the user has approved it. This holds even when the task looks trivial. "Too simple to need a design" is exactly where unexamined assumptions cause the most wasted work — a to-do app, a one-function utility, a config change all carry decisions worth naming. The design can be short (a few sentences for a genuinely simple thing), but present it and get a yes before moving on. ## Step 1: Understand the context Before asking anything, look at what already exists — relevant files, docs, recent commits, the surrounding code. Ground the conversation in the real project so your questions are about *this* idea in *this* context, not generic ones. ## Step 2: Ask questions, one at a time Refine the idea through dialogue, asking a single question at a time rather than a wall of them. You're after: - **Purpose** — what problem this solves, and for whom. - **Constraints** — technical limits, deadlines, things that must not change, existing patterns to fit. - **Success criteria** — how