ideation

Ideation Plugin

Transform brain dumps into structured implementation artifacts through a conversational interview. HTML is used for interactive decision-making (the Mission Brief contract with evidence-gate readiness, visual comparisons during the interview). Markdown is used for reference documents (specs, PRDs) consumed directly by /ideation:execute-spec. Includes an execution workflow for implementing specs in fresh sessions with per-component feedback loops, adversarial plan critics, a Scout/Reviewer agent pipeline, and a retro loop that feeds learnings back into future runs.

What's New (0.14.0)

This release ships the full Fable 5 upgrade. Six behavior changes, plus one breaking schema change:

• Evidence gates replace numeric confidence scoring. Readiness is no longer a 0–100 score. Each of 5 dimensions is a gate that is ready or not-ready, justified by a concrete artifact. The contract proceeds only when all 5 are ready (or the user ends the interview early). See Evidence Gates.
• Registered agent types. Scout, Reviewer, and the plan critics are registered agents (ideation:scout, ideation:reviewer, ideation:plan-critic) invoked with per-invocation inputs only — their workflow, output format, and read-only tool restrictions live in the agent definitions and are enforced by the platform.
• Reviewer escape hatch. During the review cycle the builder may refute a finding the code demonstrably contradicts, citing file:line evidence. A refutation is logged and carried back to the reviewer, which either withdraws it or maintains it; a maintained finding becomes blocking and may not be refuted twice.
• Adversarial plan critics. Before the contract renders, three critics (scope-creep, hidden-dependency, success-criteria) review the plan in parallel while a blocker is still a one-line JSON edit. A Critic digest is shown at the approval gate. See Plan Critics.
• Intake exploration sweep. When the work touches an existing codebase, the interview fires 2–3 parallel Explore agents at intake so the first question is already informed. Skipped for greenfield work.
• Previews-first decision aids. Comparisons default to inline AskUserQuestion previews (monospace, side-by-side) and escalate to ephemeral HTML only when the decision hinges on real visual rendering.
• Overlap-serialized parallel waves. /ideation:autopilot and --parallel execution plan waves with a tested CLI that serializes any phases declaring overlapping files, so two phases never race the same file. See Orchestration.
• Retro loop. /ideation:retro mines a completed project's implementation notes for generalizable spec-gap patterns and appends them to a repo-level docs/ideation/learnings.md that future interviews read. See Retro.
• Command Deck contract design. The contract HTML is redesigned as an instrument panel — dark-first with a co-equal light theme and an explicit theme toggle — surfacing the execution plan as an operational dashboard (run bar, phase table, copyable commands) rather than a static document. The artifact is still titled "Mission Brief".

Breaking change — contract-data.json schema. The contract now uses a gates object instead of the old confidence object. Regenerating an old contract fails fast:

contract-data.json uses the pre-gate `confidence` schema; regenerate via ideation to produce the `gates` schema.

Re-run ideation on the project to produce a gates-shaped contract-data.json. Specs also gained an optional per-phase files manifest field (the paths a phase touches), used by the autopilot/parallel engine to serialize file-overlapping phases.

Skills

ideation

Transforms raw, unstructured brain dumps (dictated freestyle) into actionable implementation artifacts through an evidence-gated workflow.

Use this before building any new feature, planning a migration, designing a system, or turning scattered ideas into a plan. Covers small single-spec projects through multi-phase initiatives.

How to invoke:

Use the ideation skill

[provide your brain dump - messy dictation, scattered thoughts, half-formed ideas]

Or simply start with your brain dump and mention you want to turn it into specs:

I want to build something. Here's what I'm thinking...

[your raw, unstructured thoughts]

...can you help me turn this into a spec?

The workflow: