By name: grill-me description: "Use when stress-testing, reviewing, or pressure-testing an existing plan, design, or decision. Systematically interrogates every decision point — one question at a time — until a shared understanding is reached."
Grill Me
Use when the user has a plan, design, or decision and wants it thoroughly challenged before committing. Goal: surface hidden assumptions, weak points, and unresolved dependencies — not generate alternatives. For generating options, use brainstorming instead.
Reserve for decisions that are expensive to reverse: data model changes, public API contracts, security posture, infrastructure choices. Skip for small or low-stakes features.
Constraints
- One question at a time. Include a recommended answer when one is clear.
- Do not ask for information you can read yourself — inspect the codebase first.
- Navigate the full decision tree — do not stop early.
- If an answer reveals a gap or contradiction, name it directly and ask the follow-up.
Process
Read the user's description and inspect relevant codebase context. Identify major decision areas: goals, constraints, data flow, failure modes, dependencies, rollout, validation.
Map decisions to validate:
- Product/feature: problem definition, success metric, MVP scope, edge cases, rollout, observability, external dependencies
- Architecture: component boundaries, data model, API contracts, failure modes, scaling, migration path, operational burden
- Implementation: fit with existing patterns, risk surface, test coverage, reversibility, performance
Start with the most load-bearing decision — the one that invalidates the most downstream choices if wrong. Follow each answer's branch before moving on.
Format each question as:
[Topic]: [Question]
Recommended: [recommendation, or "no strong preference"]
After covering all material decision points, summarize: decisions that are solid, assumptions validated, risks or gaps that remain open, items that need a decision before proceeding.
Ask whether to proceed, revise, or dig deeper into any open item. On revision, re-enter the interrogation at the affected decision point — do not restart.
Done When
All material decision points covered and user approves to proceed. Suggest implementation-plan to sequence the work.