grill_me

Relentlessly interrogate a design to eliminate ambiguity before any planning, requirements, or implementation work begins.

What it does

grill_me runs a structured, branch-by-branch interview, acting as a senior architect conducting a design review. It maps the design tree of major decision branches, walks each branch surfacing options, assumptions, and sub-decisions one at a time, resolves cross-branch dependencies, and confirms explicit shared understanding.

It never accepts vague answers: it names every decision, assumption, and constraint, resolves dependencies first, and tracks the decision tree until zero ambiguity remains.

When to use it

• A design is fuzzy and you want it pinned down before committing to requirements or a plan.
• "Grill me about this", "disambiguate", "deep-dive this", "interview me about X".
• As a front-end to make_requirements or make_plan to pre-resolve ambiguity.

Trigger phrases

"grill_me", "grill me", "grill_me on <topic>", "disambiguate", "deep-dive this", "interview me about <topic>". Resume with grill_me --continue.

Worked example

grill_me on the notification system

The skill maps the decision branches (channels, delivery guarantees, batching, opt-out, …) and walks each one with you until the design is fully specified. The shared understanding then feeds into make_requirements or make_plan.

Related skills

• make_requirements — capture the disambiguated design as RDs.
• make_plan — its Zero-Ambiguity Gate uses the grill_me output as pre-resolved context (but still runs the formal gate).