Superpowers Brainstorming

---
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. 
category: Collaboration & Project Management
source: superpowers
tags: [tdd, testing, git, planning, brainstorming, workflow]
url: https://github.com/obra/superpowers/tree/main/skills/brainstorming
---


# Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

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

Start by classifying how much process the request needs, then work
through your path: understand the context, refine the idea, present a
design, and get your human partner's approval.

## Establish Shared Understanding

The outcome of brainstorming is an understanding your human partner can
recognize and correct, grounded in what they want to accomplish.

1. **Discover intent.** Use the request and available context to identify
   the intended outcome, who it is for, and what success looks like. When
   that information is missing, ask one focused question about purpose or
   intended use before proposing features or an approach. Knowing the app
   genre does not tell you why your partner wants it. Gathering missing
   requirements does not ask them to authorize the task again.
2. **Write back your understanding.** Summarize the intended outcome,
   relevant constraints, and success criteria in a short note your partner
   can assess. Separate what they said from assumptions. Invite correction
   and incorporate their answer before treating this as the design brief.
3. **Carry intent into the design.** Preserve the agreed understanding in
   the selected path's design artifact: the written spec for architectural
   work, or the in-chat design/probe for bounded work and spikes. Check
   proposed features and technical choices against that understanding.

When the request already supplies the purpose and constraints, reflect
that understanding instead of asking the same questions again. Keep the
note concise; its accuracy and the opportunity to correct it matter.

<HARD-GATE>
Before taking any implementation action, including invoking an
implementation skill, writing product code, scaffolding, installing
product dependencies, or creating an external project, complete the
selected path's prerequisites:

- Spike: the human partner approves the question and probe.
- Bounded: the human partner approves the short in-chat design.
- Architectural: the human partner reviews and approves the written spec,
  then reviews the written implementation plan and selects its execution
  method. Conversational design approval only permits writing the spec;
  written-spec approval only permits invoking writing-plans.

A reply approves the stage actually presented. Approval of an idea or
feature scope does not approve artifacts that do not exist yet. Resume
at the earliest incomplete stage; do not turn one approval into permission
to skip the rest of the selected path. Read-only project exploration is
allowed while those prerequisites remain incomplete.
</HARD-GATE>

## Three Paths

Before your first question, classify the request and say the
classification out loud — "this looks bounded, so I'll present a short
design here rather than write a spec" — so your human partner can
override it:

- **Spike** — a feasibility question ("can we...", "is it possible...",
  "quick and dirty is fine") whose output is an answer, not code you
  keep. Present the question and what you'll try in 2-3 sentences, get
  a nod, then find out as cheaply as correctness allows. No design
  doc, no spec file. Report findings as a recommendation; anything you
  built stays labeled throwaway.
- **Bounded** — a well-scoped change to code that already exists in
  this repo: a new flag, a small endpoint, a one-file fix.
  Understanding the kind of app is not enough — bounded means the flow
  you are changing is already here to read. If there is no existing
  flow to change, the task is not bounded. Ask the clarifying
  questions that matter, present a short design IN CHAT (a few
  sentences to a few short paragraphs), and STOP. Implementation
  starts only after your human partner says yes to that design — a
  bounded task's approval is as hard a gate as an architectural
  one. No spec file, no implementation plan document.
- **Architectural** — new projects, new subsystems, changes that
  restructure how components fit together or alter interfaces others
  depend on. Follow the full process: questions, approaches, sectioned
  design, written spec, then the writing-plans skill.

When in doubt between two paths, take the heavier one. The ratchet is
one-way: hidden complexity discovered mid-task upgrades the path —
stop, say so, and step up. Nothing downgrades mid-task.

## Anti-Pattern: "Too Simple To Need Approval"

Every path ends with your human partner approving the required design
before implementation. A bounded change may need only two sentences in
chat. A new todo-list project is architectural and requires the written
spec and planning handoffs. Scale the artifact to the selected path;
complete that path's reviews before implementation.

## Red Flags

| Thought | Reality |
|---------|---------|
| "This is too simple to need a design" | Follow the selected path: a bounded change gets a short chat design; an architectural cha