995fceec7a
codebase-design, domain-modeling and grilling are pulled out as standalone, model-invoked skills precisely so other skills can point at them and so you can reach them as a reference independently of the steps any wrapper mandates. Add a "Pulled out on purpose" section to each that names who leans on it and why it stands alone, and slim the overlapping "Where it fits" prose to avoid duplication. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2.8 KiB
Quickstart:
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill=grilling
npx skills update grilling
What it does
grilling is the relentless interview that stress-tests a plan or design before you build it. It walks down the design tree branch by branch, resolving the dependencies between decisions one at a time until you and the agent share the same understanding.
It asks one question at a time and waits for your answer before the next — never a bulk list, which is bewildering. Each question comes with the agent's own recommended answer, and any question the codebase can settle it explores instead of asking you.
When to reach for it
Type /grilling, or the agent reaches for it automatically when a task fits — this is the underlying primitive, not a user-only entry point.
Reach for it when a plan or design still has soft spots and you want them surfaced before code is written. In practice you usually invoke it through one of its two wrappers rather than by name: for a plain grilling session use grill-me; to have the session also write ADRs and a glossary as it goes, use grill-with-docs.
The design tree
The mental model is a design tree: every plan branches into decisions, and decisions depend on each other. grilling descends that tree one node at a time, so an early answer can reshape which questions come next. That is why the questions arrive singly and in dependency order — a firehose of parallel questions loses the structure that makes the interview converge on a shared understanding.
Pulled out on purpose
grilling is the single source of truth for the interview technique, split out as a model-invoked primitive so every skill that needs an interview can reach it instead of reinventing one. grill-me and grill-with-docs are its two user-invoked front doors, but improve-codebase-architecture and triage also lean on it to pressure-test their own decisions.
Keeping the technique in one place means you can also reach for it directly when you just want the interview — without the ADR-writing or ticket-shaping that its wrappers add on top.
Where it fits
grilling is the interview primitive under the main build chain: grill-with-docs runs it to sharpen context before to-prd writes the spec. When you're unsure which entry point fits, ask-matt routes you.