Interview the founder relentlessly about a plan, feature or decision until there is a shared understanding with nothing silently assumed. Used by setup, new-feature and bets, or whenever the founder says grill.
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---
name: grilling
description: Interview the founder relentlessly about a plan, feature or decision until there is a shared understanding with nothing silently assumed. Used by setup, new-feature and bets, or whenever the founder says grill.
---
# Grilling
The goal is a plan with no hidden assumptions, reached with as few of the founder's minutes as
possible.
## The design tree
Every decision has decisions that hang off it. Map them as a tree before asking anything. The
**frontier** is every decision whose prerequisites are already settled: the questions that can
be asked now without guessing at answers not yet given.
## Rounds
Ask the whole frontier in one round, numbered. For each question:
- a title and the question, with the options when there are options;
- **your recommended answer and the reason in one line**, worded so that "yes" accepts it.
Then wait. A question whose answer depends on another question in the same round belongs to a
later round.
After each round, settled decisions push the frontier out. Recompute it and ask the next round.
## Facts are yours, decisions are theirs
Never ask the founder for a fact you can find: in the repo, in `project.toml`, in the docs, on
the web. Go and get it (in parallel, with a helper agent if the tool has one) and ask the rest
of the frontier meanwhile; only the questions that depend on that fact wait for it. Decisions,
preferences, money, risk and anything outward are the founder's; put each one to them.
## Push back
A grilling that only collects answers is a form. When an answer conflicts with an earlier one,
with `project.toml`, with a closed decision or with the evidence, say so in the next round and
ask which wins.
## Done
The session ends when the frontier is empty: every branch visited, nothing assumed. Then write
the outcome down (the spec, the decision rows, `project.toml`, whatever the caller asked for),
show it, and **do not act on it until the founder confirms it is what they meant.**
## Record what was turned down
Every recommendation or option the founder declined in any round goes into
`docs/requirements/p1-rejected.md` the same day: the date, what was proposed, who proposed it,
and the founder's reason (or "no reason given"). Every option they chose goes into
`p1-closed-decisions.md`. A grilling whose rejected options are not written down will be
re-asked next month as if it never happened.
