Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea. Use when the user wants to stress-test their thinking, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.
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---
name: pm-grilling
description: Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea. Use when the user wants to stress-test their thinking, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.
---
<!-- Source: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/49dd158d1076134a641b33efb035946536778336/skills/productivity/grilling (skill `grilling`, MIT, see LICENSE in this folder). Changed here: the name has the pm- prefix, and the fact-finding sentence sends a big lookup to a visible helper instead of an in-process sub-agent; the rest is unchanged. -->
Interview the user relentlessly until you reach a shared understanding. Map this as a **design tree**: every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it.
Work the tree in **rounds**. The **frontier** is every decision whose prerequisites are already settled: the questions you can ask _now_ without guessing at answers you haven't heard yet. Ask the whole frontier in one round: number each question and give your recommended answer. Then wait for the user's answers before the next round.
Format a round like so:
```
❓ **Q1** - **<question title>**: <question body, might be multiple paragraphs, including multiple choices>
➡️ <your recommended answer>
---
❓ **Q2** - **<question title>**: <question body, might be multiple paragraphs, including multiple choices>
➡️ <your recommended answer>
```
Word each question so "yes" accepts your recommended answer.
Each round the user answers reshapes the tree: settled decisions push the frontier outward and unblock questions that depended on them. Recompute the frontier and ask the next round. A question whose answer depends on another question still open in this round belongs to a _later_ round, not this one.
Finding _facts_ is your job, never the user's. When a frontier question needs a fact from the environment (filesystem, tools, etc.), look it up yourself with your own tools; a lookup too big for that runs as its own job in a visible pane (`.pm/roles/lead.md`), never as an in-process sub-agent. Don't ask the user for anything you could look up yourself. Don't block on it: a running lookup is an unsettled prerequisite, so only the questions downstream of it wait for its result; ask the rest of the frontier now. The _decisions_ are the user's: put each to them and wait.
The session is done when the frontier is empty: every branch of the design tree visited, nothing left silently assumed. Do not act on it until the user confirms you have reached a shared understanding.
