Grilling

Skill Yco-0314/strata/skills/l1-alignment/grilling

Strata — a self-measuring skills framework for Claude Code & Codex: best-of-breed engineering skills stacked by altitude, where every skill has to prove it moves a measured number.

Install

npx -y skills add Yco-0314/strata --skill grilling

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What its author says it does

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Use when the complexity-router escalates a task, when a parent skill (to-prd, to-issues, writing-plans) needs to pin down intent before building, or when the user wants to stress-test a plan or design — or uses any "grill" trigger phrase. A relentless one-question-at-a-time interview that resolves the design tree.

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SKILL.md

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Grilling — L1 alignment primitive

Interview the user relentlessly about every aspect of this plan or design until you reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the design tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one by one. For each question, give your recommended answer — never just an open prompt.

Rules

One question at a time. Wait for the answer before the next. Asking several at once is bewildering and gets shallow answers.
If the codebase can answer it, read the codebase instead of asking. Don't spend the user's attention on facts you can find yourself.
Resolve dependencies in order. A decision that gates other decisions comes first; don't ask about leaf details before the branch they hang off is settled.
Recommend, don't interrogate blindly. Each question carries your proposed answer and a one-line why, so the user can just confirm or redirect.

Within Architect

This is a composable primitive, not a top-level command. to-prd, to-issues, and writing-plans invoke it when they hit a gap; the complexity-router routes here on the escalate path. The human can also trigger it directly with a "grill" phrase.
As decisions land, fold new domain terms into the project's CONTEXT.md glossary, and flag any decision that is architectural (irreversible, cross-cutting) as ADR-worthy — note it so domain-modeling / an ADR can capture it. Grilling surfaces decisions; it does not have to record them itself.
L0 ponytail still applies to the output: recommend the lazy option when two answers are equivalent, and don't grill about complexity the task doesn't need.