Ideate

Skill duthaho/skillhub/.claude/skills/ideate

A small collection of Claude Code skills I use and maintain.

Install

npx -y skills add duthaho/skillhub --skill ideate

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

6 stars6 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Structured idea generation for a project or a blank-slate problem — ideas worth pursuing, not the first one that sticks. Grounds in the current repo (AGENTS.md/README) or a freeform problem, then diverges across named lenses (adjacent user, removed constraint, inversion, and more) so a run yields range, not ten variations of one idea. Fights premature convergence — nothing judged until the divergence quota is met — then verdicts each idea EXPLORE/PARK/DROP, where DROP is cheap. EXPLORE items become seeds for priorart (is it novel?) or feature (build it); verdicts persist in out/ideate/tracker.md so repeat runs open with what's new. Keyless. Use to generate, brainstorm, or explore ideas or new directions for a project or problem — e.g. "/ideate", "/ideate <topic>", "brainstorm features for X". For whether an idea already exists use priorart; for competitor features use scout; for choosing between named options use verdict.

SKILL.md

5.2 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

ideate — diverge before you converge

/ideate — generate ideas for THIS repo (reads its AGENTS.md/README) /ideate <topic|problem> — generate ideas for an arbitrary problem, no repo needed

Answer one question: what could this become that isn't obvious yet — and which of those directions actually deserves effort? Both halves matter. A session that only sprays ideas is a whiteboard; one that judges before it has range is just the first idea wearing a verdict. The deliverable is a short list of directions each carrying its own reason to live or die.

The enemy the whole skill is built against is premature convergence — latching onto the first plausible idea and spending the session polishing it. Every step below exists to hold divergence open long enough to be worth converging on.

Step 0 — Frame the ground

You cannot diverge from nothing; fix a starting point first.

With a repo (/ideate alone): read AGENTS.md (the map skill writes it), README, and the top-reacted open issues. Distill the project's job in one sentence and its differentiation axis — the thing it does that alternatives don't, which every later verdict is judged against.
With a topic (/ideate <problem>): restate the problem in one sentence and name the user and the constraint that hurts most. Missing pieces are assumptions — state them, don't invent facts.
Read out/ideate/tracker.md if it exists: ideas already generated, verdicts already made. A DROPped idea isn't re-raised unless something changed; repeat runs open with "Since last ideate" — what's new in the repo or problem since.

Completion criterion: job, user, and differentiation/constraint written down before any idea is generated.

Step 1 — Diverge (judgment forbidden here)

Generate ideas by working the lenses in references/lenses.md — do not freehand a flat list, which is how every session collapses into variations of one idea. Take each lens in turn and force at least one idea from it, even a weak one; range comes from the lenses being different, not from trying harder on one.

Hard rule: no evaluating, ranking, or "but that won't work" until the quota is met — aim for at least two ideas per lens worked. Judging mid- divergence is premature convergence by another name; a bad idea from an unworked lens is worth more here than a safe idea restated.

Completion criterion: every applicable lens worked, quota met, ideas captured verbatim — no pruning yet.

Step 2 — Cluster and sharpen

Now converge, but only halfway. Group the raw ideas into clusters of the same underlying bet; within each cluster keep the sharpest single statement and fold the rest into it. Kill exact duplicates. For each survivor write one line: what changes for the user if this exists. An idea whose user-impact line can't be written is a DROP waiting to happen — surface that now, not after building.

Completion criterion: a deduplicated list, each survivor with a one-line user impact.

Step 3 — Verdict each survivor

Every surviving idea gets exactly one label, with a reason:

EXPLORE — worth real effort next. Must clear two bars: it advances the differentiation axis (or genuinely relieves the worst constraint), and its effort is justified by that impact. "It sounds cool" clears neither.
PARK — plausible but not now; record the trigger that would revive it.
DROP — off-axis, redundant, or impact doesn't pay for effort. DROP is the cheap default; a session that EXPLOREs everything has judged nothing.

Hand off cleanly: each EXPLORE is a ready seed — route it to priorart (does it already exist before you build?) or straight to feature (build it). Name the handoff in the verdict.

Completion criterion: every survivor labeled EXPLORE / PARK / DROP with a reason, and every EXPLORE names its next skill.

Step 4 — Persist

Append the run to out/ideate/tracker.md: date, the frame (job + axis), and every idea with its verdict and reason — including DROPs, so they aren't re-raised next run. This is the memory that lets the next /ideate open with "Since last ideate" instead of regenerating the same list.

Completion criterion: tracker written; run reproducible from it.