brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

Model	Source	Category
opus	core	Workflow

Tools: Read, Glob, Grep, Bash, Task, AskUserQuestion, Skill

Overview

Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.

Mandatory Announcement — FIRST OUTPUT before anything else:

┏━ 🧠 brainstorming ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ [one-line description of what you're designing] ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

No exceptions. Box frame first, then work.

Start by understanding the current project context, then ask questions one at a time to refine the idea. Once you understand what you’r

• 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

Full Reference

Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

Overview

Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.

Mandatory Announcement — FIRST OUTPUT before anything else:

┏━ 🧠 brainstorming ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ [one-line description of what you're designing] ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

No exceptions. Box frame first, then work.

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 .claude/docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and commit
6. Transition to implementation — invoke writing-plans skill to create implementation plan

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" [shape=box];
    "Domain pimp applies?" [shape=diamond];
    "Invoke domain pimp" [shape=doublecircle];
    "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" [label="yes"];
    "Write design doc" -> "Domain pimp applies?";
    "Domain pimp applies?" -> "Invoke domain pimp" [label="yes"];
    "Domain pimp applies?" -> "Invoke writing-plans skill" [label="no"];
}

The terminal state is either a domain pimp OR writing-plans — never both, never skip the check.

After writing the design doc, check whether the approved design targets a domain with a pimp orchestrator. If yes, invoke the pimp first — it will handle routing to the right sub-skill AND then chain to writing-plans internally. If no, invoke writing-plans directly.

Domain Pimp Check

After Write design doc, evaluate the design domain:

If the design is primarily about…	Invoke instead of writing-plans
Frontend, UI, styling, components, CSS, design system	frontend-pimp
Brand assets, brand voice, guidelines, brand strategy	brand-pimp
Merch, t-shirts, stickers, POD, mockups, apparel	merch-pimp
macOS automation, AppleScript, Peekaboo, GUI scripting	macos-pimp
DNS records, domains, nameservers, email auth (SPF/DKIM)	dns-pimp
Google CLI ecosystem (gogcli, goplaces, gcloud, Ads CLI)	google-pimp
OpenCode config, agents, tools, extensions	opencode-pimp
None of the above — general feature, backend, API, data	writing-plans ← default

Rule: One pimp per design. If the design spans multiple domains, pick the primary one. When in doubt, go to writing-plans — it’s always correct and pimps can still be invoked during execution.

The Process

Understanding the idea:

• Check out the current project state first (files, docs, recent commits)
• 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

After the Design

Documentation:

• Write the validated design to .claude/docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md
• Use elements-of-style:writing-clearly-and-concisely skill if available
• Commit the design document to git

Implementation:

• Run the Domain Pimp Check (table above) — if the design maps to a domain pimp, invoke it now
• If no pimp applies, invoke writing-plans directly
• Do NOT skip the domain pimp check. Do NOT invoke writing-plans if a pimp applies.

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