explore-unknowns

# Explore Unknowns The map is not the territory. The prompt, the plan, and the context window are the map; the codebase, the domain, and the user's actual intent are the territory. The gap between them is the unknowns — and an unknown found before code is written costs minutes, while the same unknown found three PRs later costs the three PRs. This skill is a guided conversation: the **quadrant walk**. Together with the user you fill in a four-quadrant map of the task, one quadrant per stage, and the user walks away holding the completed map. The map is the deliverable; implementation is a different task that starts only after the map is handed over. Two moves apply at every stage: - **Reacting beats imagining.** Never ask the user to describe what they want when you can hand them something concrete to react to — a rendered option, a clickable mock, a decisions table. Reacting extracts knowledge the user has but cannot articulate unprompted. - **Every artifact assembles the reply.** End each artifact with the user's next message pre-drafted: steal/skip chips, resonate checkboxes, a decisions table, a copyable sharpened prompt — so their reaction becomes their next message with near-zero typing. ## The Quadrant Walk Five stages, walked in order, one at a time. **When you enter a stage, read its reference file and follow it.** Name the current quadrant as you go — the user should always know where they stand on the map — and finish the stage in front of you bef...