brainstorminglisted

# 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. <HARD-GATE> Do NOT invoke any implementation skill, write any code, scaffold any project, or take any implementation action until you have presented a design and the user has approved it. This applies to EVERY project regardless of perceived simplicity. </HARD-GATE> ## 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. ## Classify the work first — right-size the ceremony Not every request needs the full multi-approach, sectioned-design treatment. Classify the intent, then scale the dialogue to it. **The HARD-GATE is universal — complexity decides the length of the artifact, never whether approval happens. And in Hydraia a written spec is always produced (the spec-drive gate depends on it); the class decides how long that spec is, not whether it exists.** - **Spike** (a feasibility question — "can we even do X?"): present the probe plan in 2–3 sentences → get ap