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 you'l