Grill requirements

Grill Requirements

Interview until the important decisions are explicit. Do not implement the idea.

Respond in the user's language

Detect the user's language from their messages and use it for all prose addressed to them: questions, explanations, recommendations, status, and the closing summary. Keep every machine token verbatim — code, commands, file paths, schema field names, stable IDs, and the status or verdict values this skill returns — and convey their meaning in the surrounding prose rather than translating the tokens. If the user's language is unclear, ask once, then continue in the chosen language.

Persisted artifacts are contracts, not chat. Keep their template headings, YAML keys, stable IDs, and status tokens exactly as specified so downstream skills and validators keep working. Narrative content inside an artifact may follow the user's language when the user asks for it.

Load references

• Read decision-tree.md to select relevant question branches.
• Read interview-protocol.md before asking the first question.
• Read output-contract.md before concluding.

Separate facts from decisions

Inspect available files, code, documentation, tools, and connected sources before asking the user. Look up discoverable facts. Ask only for decisions, preferences, priorities, trade-offs, authority, or unavailable business context.

Accept a short or incomplete prompt. Build a coverage view from the relevant branches in decision-tree.md; the user is not responsible for knowing which context fields to list up front.

Do not ask the user to restate information already provided. Distinguish:

• FACT: supported by evidence;
• INFERENCE: plausible but not confirmed;
• DECISION: chosen by the user;
• ASSUMPTION: temporarily accepted to make progress;
• OPEN: unresolved and material.

Ask one question at a time

For each material decision:

1. State the decision in one sentence.
2. Explain why it matters now.
3. Present relevant evidence or constraints.
4. Give a recommended answer and its main trade-off.
5. Ask exactly one question.
6. Wait for the user's answer before continuing.

Do not present a batch questionnaire. Do not hide several decisions inside one question.

Continue until every relevant material branch is resolved, explicitly defaulted, marked not applicable, or retained as a blocking open decision. Do not stop merely because the initial request was answered at a superficial level.

If the user chooses auto mode, answer low-risk decisions with the recommendation, record them as assumptions, and continue. Still pause for decisions involving public behavior, data loss, security boundaries, legal or financial exposure, irreversible actions, production access, or material cost.

Follow dependencies

Resolve upstream decisions before dependent ones. Example:

target user -> problem -> outcome -> scope -> behavior -> edge cases
-> data/API/architecture constraints -> rollout -> success measurement

Skip irrelevant branches. Reopen an earlier branch if a later answer contradicts it.

Challenge constructively

Test whether:

• the stated problem is supported;
• software work is the right intervention;
• a smaller solution reaches the outcome;
• proposed behavior has a clear user or system owner;
• success and failure are observable;
• scope, non-goals, and compatibility are explicit;
• security, privacy, migration, operations, and rollback are addressed where relevant;
• requirements are mutually consistent.

Do not force artificial certainty. Preserve important unknowns.

Conclude only with shared understanding

Before concluding, summarize the decision ledger and ask the user to confirm that shared understanding has been reached. Do not initiate implementation.

Return one of:

• RESOLVED: material decisions are explicit;
• PARTIALLY_RESOLVED: progress is useful but material open decisions remain;
• REJECTED: the user deliberately decides not to proceed.

Produce the output defined in output-contract.md. Persist it at .ai/discovery/<slug>-decision-brief.md when repository writes are available; otherwise return it in chat and explicitly ask preparation to persist it. The result is input for prepare-development-cycle; it is not itself an implementation authorization.

Summarize what you did

After returning the outcome, close with a short summary in the user's language that states:

• what you did and what it decided or produced;
• the status or verdict you returned and what it means for the user;
• where each created or updated file now lives, by exact repository path;
• the recommended next step.

Name file locations explicitly and never claim a file was written that was not. When repository writes were unavailable and the output was returned in chat only, say so and name where it should be persisted.

This skill normally writes:

• .ai/discovery/<slug>-decision-brief.md — the decision brief, when repository writes are available; otherwise the brief returned in chat, with an explicit request that prepare-development-cycle persist it.