hermes-skills/brainstorming/SKILL.md

---
name: brainstorming
description: "Explore user intent and design before implementation."
version: 1.0.0
author: Hermes Agent (adapted from obra/superpowers)
license: MIT
platforms: [linux]
metadata:
  hermes:
    tags: [design, planning, brainstorming, requirements]
    related_skills: [create-plan, subagent-driven-development]
---

# Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.

Start by understanding the current project context, then ask questions one at a time to refine the idea. Once you understand what you're building, present the design and get user approval.

## Hard Gate

Do NOT invoke any implementation skill, write any code, scaffold any project, or take any implementation action until you have presented a design and the user has approved it. This applies to EVERY project regardless of perceived simplicity.

## Anti-Pattern: "This Is Too Simple To Need A Design"

Every project goes through this process. A todo list, a single-function utility, a config change — all of them. "Simple" projects are where unexamined assumptions cause the most wasted work. The design can be short (a few sentences for truly simple projects), but you MUST present it and get approval.

## Checklist

You MUST create a task for each of these items and complete them in order:

1. Explore project context — check files, docs, recent commits
2. Ask clarifying questions — one at a time, understand purpose/constraints/success criteria
3. Propose 2-3 approaches — with trade-offs and your recommendation
4. Present design — in sections scaled to their complexity, get user approval after each section
5. Write design doc — save to plans/YYYY-MM-DD-topic-design.md and commit
6. Spec self-review — quick inline check for placeholders, contradictions, ambiguity, scope
7. User reviews written spec — ask user to review the spec file before proceeding
8. Transition to implementation — invoke create-plan skill to create implementation plan

## The Process

**Understanding the idea:**

- Check out the current project state first (files, docs, recent commits)
- Before asking detailed questions, assess scope: if the request describes multiple independent subsystems, flag this immediately
- If the project is too large for a single spec, help the user decompose into sub-projects
- Ask questions one at a time to refine the idea
- Prefer multiple choice questions when possible, but open-ended is fine too
- Only one question per message
- Focus on understanding: purpose, constraints, success criteria

**Exploring approaches:**

- Propose 2-3 different approaches with trade-offs
- Present options conversationally with your recommendation and reasoning
- Lead with your recommended option and explain why
- YAGNI ruthlessly - remove unnecessary features from every approach and design

**Presenting the design:**

- Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design
- Scale each section to its complexity
- Ask after each section whether it looks right so far
- Cover: architecture, components, data flow, error handling, testing
- Be ready to go back and clarify if something doesn't make sense

**Design for isolation and clarity:**

- Break the system into smaller units that each have one clear purpose
- Communicate through well-defined interfaces
- Can be understood and tested independently
- Smaller, well-bounded units are easier to reason about

**Working in existing codebases:**

- Explore the current structure before proposing changes. Follow existing patterns.
- Where existing code has problems, include targeted improvements as part of the design
- Don't propose unrelated refactoring. Stay focused on what serves the current goal.

## After the Design

**Documentation:**

- Write the validated design (spec) to plans/YYYY-MM-DD-topic-design.md
- Commit the design document to git

**Spec Self-Review:**
After writing the spec document, look at it with fresh eyes:

1. Placeholder scan: Any "TBD", "TODO", incomplete sections, or vague requirements? Fix them.
2. Internal consistency: Do any sections contradict each other?
3. Scope check: Is this focused enough for a single implementation plan?
4. Ambiguity check: Could any requirement be interpreted two different ways?

Fix any issues inline. No need to re-review — just fix and move on.

**User Review Gate:**
After the spec review loop passes, ask the user to review the written spec before proceeding. Wait for the user's response. If they request changes, make them. Only proceed once the user approves.

**Implementation:**

- Invoke the create-plan skill to create a detailed implementation plan
- Do NOT invoke any other skill. create-plan is the next step.