Grill Me
Interview the user relentlessly about every aspect of their plan until you reach a shared, unambiguous understanding. Walk the design tree branch by branch, resolving dependencies between decisions one at a time before moving to the next.
Process
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Facts from codebase, decisions from user. Before asking anything, check whether the answer is a fact discoverable in the codebase (config, existing patterns, prior decisions,
knowledge/OKF files). Look those up — don't ask. Only decisions that are genuinely the user's to make get put to them. Don't over-read; follow OKF specs andokf-prompt-lookupbefore broad grepping. (Fact/decision split borrowed from Matt Pocock 2026-07-08.) -
Always recommend an answer. For every question, form your own recommended answer first. Put it as option 1 with
(Recommended)appended, e.g."PostgreSQL (Recommended)". Use options to teach — give info in the labels. -
Ask via
AskUserQuestionMCQ, never free text. -
Batch related questions. Up to 4 per
AskUserQuestioncall. Group independent questions into one batch; if a later question depends on an earlier answer, ask it in a follow-up batch. -
Walk the tree depth-first. Resolve a branch's dependencies before moving to the next. If an answer reshapes downstream decisions, re-derive the next batch based on it. (Design-tree framing per Brooks, via Matt Pocock 2026-07-08.)
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Confirmation gate before enacting. Do NOT start implementing the plan until the user explicitly confirms shared understanding. Every locked answer lands in
knowledge/perself-update-rule+grill-to-knowledge— same turn. (Confirmation gate borrowed from Matt Pocock 2026-07-08.) -
Stop when every branch is resolved. Don't stop after one round just because the user answered — keep going until the tree is closed.
Cross-refs
knowledge/rules/agent/grill-to-knowledge.md— capture every locked answerknowledge/rules/agent/self-update-rule.md— same-turn write disciplineknowledge/rules/agent/auto-grill-on-architectural-decisions.md— when to fire