Grill Me
Relentlessly interview the user until there is shared understanding across all important decision branches.
Supported Scopes
Use this workflow for any of these targets:
- Repository or project level strategy
- Module level architecture
- Feature design inside a module
- OpenSpec living spec namespace or a specific module capability inside a namespace
- OpenSpec proposed change
Core Rules
- Ask exactly one question at a time.
- For each question, provide your recommended answer before waiting for user confirmation.
- If a question can be answered from the codebase or docs, investigate first and present evidence-backed findings instead of asking blindly.
- Keep drilling until each branch is resolved, explicitly deferred, or marked out of scope.
- Do not move to implementation advice until the decision tree is stable.
Procedure
- Frame the scope and objective.
- Confirm what is being stress-tested (repository, module, feature, namespace/capability, or change).
- Define the target outcome (approved design, implementable plan, review checklist, or decision record).
- Build the initial decision tree.
- Identify major branches relevant to the scope:
- Goals and success criteria
- Functional behavior and scenarios
- Boundaries, ownership, and interfaces
- Data and state concerns
- Security, permissions, and compliance
- Performance, reliability, and failure handling
- Testing and verification strategy
- Rollout, migration, and rollback
- Open risks, assumptions, and unknowns
- Order branches by risk and dependency so upstream decisions are resolved first.
- Run the interview loop.
- Ask one high-impact question.
- Include:
- Why the question matters
- Recommended answer
- Impact of accepting that recommendation
- Wait for the user answer before proceeding.
- Branch resolution logic.
- If the user agrees: lock the decision and move to the next dependent branch.
- If the user disagrees: capture the alternative, test consequences, and ask the next narrowing question.
- If unknown: investigate code/spec/docs; if still unknown, mark as explicit risk with owner and trigger.
- If blocked by external dependency: record defer condition and continue with independent branches.
- Evidence-first behavior.
- Prefer codebase exploration when facts are discoverable.
- Cite concrete artifacts (files, endpoints, contracts, specs, tasks) before escalating to user questions.
- Convert discovered facts into sharper follow-up questions.
- Finish with a closure packet.
- Provide:
- Final decision map (resolved branches)
- Open questions and blockers
- Assumptions to validate later
- Recommended next action sequence
- Stop only when shared understanding is explicit.
Quality Bar
A successful grilling session produces:
- No unresolved high-risk branch without an explicit defer reason
- Clear rationale for each major decision
- Traceable dependencies between decisions
- A practical next-step plan that can be executed or reviewed immediately
Prompts You Can Use
- "Grill me on this repository refactor plan."
- "Grill me on the Session module permission model."
- "Grill me on this feature design in Lifeline."
- "Grill me on this OpenSpec platform namespace capability spec."
- "Grill me on openspec change zoom-admin-dashboard-oauth-ui."