Brainstorming 28

---
name: brainstorming
description: "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."
---

# Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

## Overview

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

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 in small sections (200-300 words), checking after each section whether it looks right so far.

## 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
- Explain each approach conversationally first, with your recommendation and reasoning
- Lead with your recommended option and explain why
- Then use `AskUserQuestion` to capture the decision:

```javascript
AskUserQuestion(
  questions: [{
    question: "Which approach should we take?",
    header: "Approach",
    multiSelect: false,
    options: [
      { label: "<Approach> (Recommended)", description: "<trade-offs>" },
      { label: "<Approach 2>", description: "<trade-offs>" }
    ]
  }]
)
```

- If user selects "Other", ask follow-up questions to understand their alternative

**Presenting the design:**
- Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design
- Break it into sections of 200-300 words
- 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 `.plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md` in the project root
- Commit the design document to git

**Implementation (if continuing):**
- Ask: "Ready to set up for implementation?"
- Use Skill(writing-plans) to create detailed implementation plan

## Key Principles

- **One question at a time** - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions
- **Multiple choice preferred** - Use `AskUserQuestion` for approach selection; conversational for open-ended exploration
- **YAGNI ruthlessly** - Remove unnecessary features from all designs
- **Explore alternatives** - Always propose 2-3 approaches before settling
- **Incremental validation** - Present design in sections, validate each
- **Be flexible** - Go back and clarify when something doesn't make sense