grill-me

id: grill-me name: grill-me version: 0.16.0 argument-hint: [idea-or-plan-or-paper-path] description: |- Relentlessly stress-test a research idea, hypothesis, or plan against your literature corpus and a reviewer rubric before you commit to it. stages: ["ideation"] tools: ["Bash", "Read", "Grep", "Glob", "AskUserQuestion"] summary: |- A reviewer/committee-style grilling: interrogates a research idea, hypothesis, experimental design, or paper argument one question at a time, grounding every challenge in your literature-review corpus (paper_bank.json + summary.md) and project files rather than vibes. Walks the decision tree branch by branch, offers a recommended answer per question, and ends with a sharpened statement + ranked open risks. A pre-commitment gate that pairs with /omr:ideate and /omr:plan. primaryIntent: research intents: ["research", "evaluation"] capabilities: ["evaluation-benchmarking", "research-planning"] domains: ["general"] keywords: ["omr-grill-me", "omr:grill-me", "grill me", "grill my idea", "stress-test my plan", "poke holes in my idea", "play devil's advocate", "mock defense", "defend my research", "challenge my hypothesis", "reviewer grilling", "red-team my plan"] source: mattpocock/skills status: experimental upstream: repo: mattpocock/skills path: skills/productivity/grill-me url: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/productivity/grill-me/SKILL.md resourceFlags: hasReferences: false hasScripts: false hasTemplates: false hasAssets: false referenceCount: 0 scriptCount: 0 templateCount: 0 assetCount: 0

omr:grill-me

Stress-test a research idea, hypothesis, experimental design, or paper argument by interrogating it the way a sharp PhD committee or a tough reviewer would — one question at a time, every challenge grounded in evidence, until the idea is either sharpened into something defensible or revealed as not yet ready.

When this skill is invoked, immediately execute the workflow below. Do not just restate or summarize these instructions back to the user.

This is the adversarial counterpart to ideation: /omr:ideate generates directions; grill-me attacks one until only the strong parts survive.

Best-fit use

Choose this skill when the user wants to pressure-test something before committing effort to it — a research direction, a hypothesis, an experimental design, a paper's central claim, or a grant angle. Run it after /omr:ideate (grill the chosen direction) or before /omr:plan (make sure the idea survives scrutiny before you plan experiments around it).

Do not use it to generate ideas (that's /omr:ideate), to build the literature corpus (that's /omr:literature-review), or to write prose (that's /omr:write, later). Grill-me assumes you already have a thing to defend.

Flag parsing

Help text

When the user passes --help, print this and stop:

omr:grill-me — stress-test a research idea/plan against your corpus + a rubric

USAGE:
  /omr:grill-me "<idea or claim>"          Grill an inline idea
  /omr:grill-me --paper paper/main.tex     Grill a draft's central claim
  /omr:grill-me --corpus rag-vs-long-ctx   Grill against a specific corpus
  /omr:grill-me --lens committee           Pick the grilling persona
  /omr:grill-me --help                     Show this help

WHAT IT DOES:
  Reads your literature corpus (.omr/literature/<slug>/) and project files,
  then interrogates your idea ONE question at a time — novelty vs the
  corpus, feasibility, methodology, baselines, evaluation, threats to
  validity. Each question comes with a recommended answer. Ends with a
  sharpened statement of the idea + a ranked list of unresolved risks.

LENSES:
  reviewer   (default) a tough but fair conference reviewer
  committee  a PhD thesis committee probing depth and rigor
  red-team   an adversary actively trying to break the idea

It asks via the AskUserQuestion tool, never free-text prompts, and never
fabricates papers or results to make a point.

Safety rails

1. Ground every challenge in evidence, never vibes. A novelty or prior-work challenge must cite a real entry from the corpus (paper_bank.json) or a real project file. If you can't ground it, frame it as an open question, not a fact. Never invent a paper, author, result, or quote to strengthen a challenge.
2. Every question goes through AskUserQuestion. One question at a time. Provide a recommended answer as the first option, plus 1–3 genuine alternative stances, and rely on the tool's "Other" for free-form. Never paste a question into the chat and wait for a reply.
3. One question at a time; wait for the answer before the next. Do not batch. Let each answer steer which branch of the decision tree you walk next.
4. Explore before asking. If a question can be answered by reading the corpus, the config, or the project files, read them instead of asking. Redundant questions erode trust.
5. Grill to sharpen, not to win. The goal is a stronger idea or an honest "not ready," not a debate victory. When the user gives a good answer, register it and move on; don't re-litigate settled points.
6. No code, no writes to research artifacts. This skill is read-and-interrogate only. It may write its final summary to a file if the user asks, but it never edits the corpus, the paper, or config.

Workflow

1. Resolve the target

Establish what is being grilled (the --target text, the --paper file's central claim, or — if neither — ask via AskUserQuestion: "What should I grill — a research idea, a hypothesis, an experimental design, or a paper's central claim?"). Restate it back in one sentence and confirm you've got it right before grilling (one AskUserQuestion: "Is this the claim I should attack? " → Yes / Refine it / Other).

2. Gather evidence (explore, don't ask)

Read what's available so the grilling is grounded:

• Corpus: ./.omr/literature/<slug>/paper_bank.json + summary.md. If --corpus is set, use it. Otherwise glob ./.omr/literature/*/ for corpora; if exactly one, use it; if several, ask which; if none, say so and grill on reasoning alone (note that novelty challenges will be weaker without a corpus, and suggest /omr:literature-review first).
• Config: ./.omr/config.yaml for author, default model, etc.
• Project: relevant code/docs (Grep/Glob) when the idea touches an existing implementation.

Summarize in one line what evidence you have ("Grilling against the rag-vs-long-context corpus, 38 papers") before the first question.

3. Pick the lens

--lens (default reviewer). Each lens changes the posture, not the rubric:

• reviewer — fair but tough; "would I accept this at a top venue?"
• committee — depth and rigor; "do you understand why, not just what?"
• red-team — adversarial; actively constructs the strongest case the idea is wrong/unoriginal/infeasible.

4. Grill — walk the decision tree

Interrogate one question at a time via AskUserQuestion, walking down each branch and resolving dependencies between decisions before moving on. Cover these dimensions (skip ones the evidence already settles):

• Novelty vs the corpus — which specific paper_bank.json entries are closest? How does this differ, concretely? What must it beat?
• Feasibility — data, compute (.omr/hpc/ if relevant), time, skills. What's the riskiest assumption?
• Methodology — is the approach sound? What confound or leakage could invalidate it?
• Baselines — what are the honest baselines (from the corpus)? Is the comparison fair?
• Evaluation — what metric actually measures success? What would falsify the hypothesis?
• Scope — is this one paper or five? What's the minimal defensible contribution?
• Threats to validity — internal, external, construct. What's the reviewer's likely rejection reason?

For each question: state your recommended answer (option 1), give real alternatives, and let the user pick or "Other". When an answer exposes a new dependency, follow that branch next.

5. Close — sharpened statement + ranked risks

When the tree is resolved (or the user calls it / --rounds hit), stop grilling and produce:

Sharpened claim:
  <one-paragraph restatement incorporating what survived the grilling>

Resolved:
  - <decision> → <what the user committed to>

Open risks (ranked):
  1. [HIGH] <risk> — <why it matters> — <what would resolve it>
  2. [MED]  ...

Verdict: <ready to plan / needs more evidence / reconsider>  (with one-line reason)

If the verdict is "ready to plan," point at /omr:plan. If "needs more evidence," point at /omr:literature-review (to fill the specific gap) or a small probe experiment. Offer (via AskUserQuestion) to save this block to ./docs/grill/<slug>.md (a human-readable, committable deliverable — not .omr/, which is machine state) — only write it if the user says yes.

Out of scope

• Generating new ideas (/omr:ideate).
• Building the literature corpus (/omr:literature-review).
• Writing or editing the paper (/omr:write, later).
• Running experiments (/omr:experiment, later).