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.

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.

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/superpowers/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and commit
6. Spec review loop (dual reviewer, codex) — capture SPEC_BASE before writing the spec; after committing, dispatch the structural-completeness reviewer (dispatch.sh task, spec-document-reviewer sidecar) and the design-soundness reviewer (dispatch.sh adversarial, adversarial-spec-review-focus.md) in parallel each round; fix ALL findings; loop until the structural-completeness reviewer returns Status: OKAY AND the design-soundness reviewer returns Verdict: approve in the same round (see below — do NOT do this inline)
7. User reviews written spec — ask user to review the spec file before proceeding; if changes requested, fix them and re-run the dual review loop (step 6) until both pass, then wait for explicit approval
8. Transition to implementation — invoke writing-plans skill to create implementation plan (this is the ONLY next step; never jump straight to code)

Process Flow

digraph brainstorming {
    "Explore project context" [shape=box];
    "Ask clarifying questions" [shape=box];
    "Propose 2-3 approaches" [shape=box];
    "Present design sections" [shape=box];
    "User approves design?" [shape=diamond];
    "Write design doc\n+ capture SPEC_BASE" [shape=box];
    "Spec review loop\n(structural-completeness: dispatch.sh task + design-soundness: dispatch.sh adversarial\nboth parallel, both must pass)" [shape=box];
    "User reviews spec?" [shape=diamond];
    "Invoke writing-plans skill" [shape=doublecircle];

    "Explore project context" -> "Ask clarifying questions";
    "Ask clarifying questions" -> "Propose 2-3 approaches";
    "Propose 2-3 approaches" -> "Present design sections";
    "Present design sections" -> "User approves design?";
    "User approves design?" -> "Present design sections" [label="no, revise"];
    "User approves design?" -> "Write design doc\n+ capture SPEC_BASE" [label="yes"];
    "Write design doc\n+ capture SPEC_BASE" -> "Spec review loop\n(structural-completeness: dispatch.sh task + design-soundness: dispatch.sh adversarial\nboth parallel, both must pass)";
    "Spec review loop\n(structural-completeness: dispatch.sh task + design-soundness: dispatch.sh adversarial\nboth parallel, both must pass)" -> "Spec review loop\n(structural-completeness: dispatch.sh task + design-soundness: dispatch.sh adversarial\nboth parallel, both must pass)" [label="any finding — fix all, re-dispatch both"];
    "Spec review loop\n(structural-completeness: dispatch.sh task + design-soundness: dispatch.sh adversarial\nboth parallel, both must pass)" -> "User reviews spec?" [label="both OKAY + approve"];
    "User reviews spec?" -> "Spec review loop\n(structural-completeness: dispatch.sh task + design-soundness: dispatch.sh adversarial\nboth parallel, both must pass)" [label="changes requested — re-run dual loop"];
    "User reviews spec?" -> "Invoke writing-plans skill" [label="explicitly approved"];
}

The terminal state is invoking writing-plans. Do NOT invoke frontend-design, mcp-builder, or any other implementation skill. The ONLY skill you invoke after brainstorming is writing-plans.

The Process

Understanding the idea:

• Check out the current project state first (files, docs, recent commits)
• Before asking detailed questions, assess scope: if the request describes multiple independent subsystems (e.g., "build a platform with chat, file storage, billing, and analytics"), flag this immediately. Don't spend questions refining details of a project that needs to be decomposed first.
• If the project is too large for a single spec, help the user decompose into sub-projects: what are the independent pieces, how do they relate, what order should they be built? Then brainstorm the first sub-project through the normal design flow. Each sub-project gets its own spec → plan → implementation cycle.
• For appropriately-scoped projects, ask questions one at a time to refine the idea
• Prefer multiple choice questions when possible, but open-ended is fine too
• Only one question per message - if a topic needs more exploration, break it into multiple questions
• Focus on understanding: purpose, constraints, success criteria

Exploring approaches:

• Propose 2-3 different approaches with trade-offs
• Present options conversationally with your recommendation and reasoning
• Lead with your recommended option and explain why

Presenting the design:

• Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design
• Scale each section to its complexity: a few sentences if straightforward, up to 200-300 words if nuanced
• Ask after each section whether it looks right so far
• Cover: architecture, components, data flow, error handling, testing
• Be ready to go back and clarify if something doesn't make sense

Design for isolation and clarity:

• Break the system into smaller units that each have one clear purpose, communicate through well-defined interfaces, and can be understood and tested independently
• For each unit, you should be able to answer: what does it do, how do you use it, and what does it depend on?
• Can someone understand what a unit does without reading its internals? Can you change the internals without breaking consumers? If not, the boundaries need work.
• Smaller, well-bounded units are also easier for you to work with - you reason better about code you can hold in context at once, and your edits are more reliable when files are focused. When a file grows large, that's often a signal that it's doing too much.

Working in existing codebases:

• Explore the current structure before proposing changes. Follow existing patterns.
• Where existing code has problems that affect the work (e.g., a file that's grown too large, unclear boundaries, tangled responsibilities), include targeted improvements as part of the design - the way a good developer improves code they're working in.
• Don't propose unrelated refactoring. Stay focused on what serves the current goal.

After the Design

Documentation:

• Write the validated design (spec) to docs/superpowers/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md
  • (User preferences for spec location override this default)
• Use elements-of-style:writing-clearly-and-concisely skill if available
• Commit the design document to git

Spec Review Loop (Dual Reviewer, codex companion):

Do NOT perform inline self-review. After writing and committing the spec document, dispatch two reviewers in parallel using the codex companion. Both reviewers examine the same spec document; both must pass before proceeding.

Before writing the spec file, capture SPEC_BASE:

SPEC_BASE="$(git rev-parse HEAD)"

Store this value — it is the parent commit of the spec commit and must not change across rounds.

Structural Completeness reviewer (dispatch.sh task, read-only): Checks: placeholder scan, internal consistency, scope check, ambiguity check, YAGNI. Returns Status: OKAY or Status: Issues Found.

Design Soundness reviewer (dispatch.sh adversarial): Challenges design-level soundness: failure paths / partial failure / rollback, concurrency and ordering assumptions, boundary and empty states, compatibility / migration risk, unstated critical assumptions. Returns Verdict: approve or Verdict: needs-attention.

Parallel dispatch per round:

Both reviewers are launched simultaneously each round as separate background Bash calls (run_in_background: true). When a backgrounded dispatch finishes, Claude Code notifies you automatically — do NOT poll BashOutput in a loop or otherwise wait for the output to have a value. Wait for each reviewer's completion notification, then read that task's output once. Collect both outputs before evaluating results.

Dispatch mechanism (shared dispatch.sh, run from repo root). ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} is inline-expanded inside this SKILL.md at load time; the spec path is repo-root-relative.

Each reviewer is a separate run_in_background: true Bash call (its own shell), so each block invokes dispatch.sh directly via ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} (the skill is assumed to be installed as a plugin).

Structural Completeness reviewer:

"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dispatch.sh" task \
  --prompt "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brainstorming/spec-document-reviewer-prompt.md" \
  --set SPEC_FILE_PATH=docs/superpowers/specs/<YYYY-MM-DD-topic>-design.md

Design Soundness reviewer. Fill <SPEC_BASE> with the SHA captured before the spec commit; substitute the value, do not run verbatim:

"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dispatch.sh" adversarial \
  --base <SPEC_BASE> \
  --focus "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/brainstorming/adversarial-spec-review-focus.md"

Round loop — zero tolerance:

while true:
  [launch the structural-completeness and design-soundness reviewers in parallel, wait for both]
  if structural_completeness == "Status: OKAY" AND design_soundness == "Verdict: approve":
    break  # both passed — exit loop
  fix_all_findings(structural_completeness.issues + design_soundness.findings)  # every finding — none skipped
  # spec was edited — re-dispatch BOTH reviewers next round
  # (both re-run together whenever any spec edit is made)

Any finding from either reviewer blocks the round. Fix everything before re-dispatching.

Git commit discipline: Before the first review round, commit the first version of the spec. After each round's fixes, commit again with a message noting the round (e.g. docs(spec): fix review round 2 - resolve ambiguity in auth flow). If the spec file is gitignored, skip the commit — NEVER use git add -f to force-add an ignored file. If the spec is gitignored, the design-soundness reviewer cannot diff the spec commit and must be skipped for that round (note the skip in output).

User Review Gate:

After the dual review loop reports both OKAY and approve, ask the user to review the written spec before proceeding:

"Spec written and committed to <path>. Please review it and let me know if you want to make any changes before we start writing out the implementation plan."

Wait for the user's response. If they request changes:

1. Make the requested changes.
2. Re-run the dual spec review loop (both the structural-completeness and design-soundness reviewers in parallel, until both pass). If the change affects global consistency or scope, the full spec is re-reviewed; if it only affects a single section, the review may focus there — but both reviewers still re-run.
3. Commit the fixes (with a round-labeled commit message).
4. Report the changes back to the user and wait for their next reply.

Only leave this gate and proceed to writing-plans once the user explicitly approves (e.g. "OK", "looks good", "start the plan"). Do not proceed on ambiguous or silent responses.

Implementation:

The mandatory workflow sequence is brainstorming → spec document → writing-plans → plan document → implementation, in strict order. Never jump from brainstorming straight to code, and never skip the spec or plan stages — even for "simple" tasks.

• Invoke the writing-plans skill to create a detailed implementation plan.
• Do NOT invoke any other skill. writing-plans is the ONLY next step after brainstorming.

Key Principles

• One question at a time - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions
• Multiple choice preferred - Easier to answer than open-ended when possible
• YAGNI ruthlessly - Remove unnecessary features from all designs
• Explore alternatives - Always propose 2-3 approaches before settling
• Incremental validation - Present design, get approval before moving on
• Be flexible - Go back and clarify when something doesn't make sense