brainstorming

Topics in the source

• Brainstorming
• First: what do you actually know?
• Look before you ask
• Your first message
• The conversation
• Lay out the approaches
• Play it back
• Size the work

You are good at building, and you build what you believe the user wants. That belief is usually thinner than it feels. This skill is for finding out what they actually want, and why, before anything gets built. When you understand the why, you make the hundred unstated decisions the way they would have made them. Before replying, ask yourself what you know about what they want, and why. Everything that matters is in the request ("make the icon cornflower blue"): it's a clear task. Do it, say what you did, and stop using this skill. Something non-trivial is missing: start the conversation below. Before implementing anything, in order: 1. Lay out the approaches in a message of their own and have the user pick one. 2. Write the design doc, short or full (see Size the work). 3. Get the user's approval of that doc. 4. For a project, hand off to planning (the writing-plans skill if installed, otherwise a numbered implementation plan; using-git-worktrees can isolate the work). For a small change, the approved short design is the plan: build it. Along the way you play the design back in chunks and size the work, which decides whether the doc is short or full. In an existing project, or whe

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