The Brainstorming Skill — Shape the Idea Before You Build It

Last Updated: 2026.07.07

Overview

It's easy to ask an agent for something and get back a confident, polished answer to the wrong question. Brainstorming exists to prevent exactly that. When you turn it on, the agent stops being a produce-it-now generator and becomes a deliberate design partner: it explores what you actually want, pins down the requirements, and agrees a design with you — before it builds anything at all.

Think of it as the "measure twice, cut once" mode. A few minutes of questions up front saves you from throwing away a finished thing that missed the mark.

How to Turn It On

Two ways, whichever suits you:

Type it: put /brainstorming anywhere in your message (start or middle).

Pick it: choose Brainstorming from the skill dropdown in the chat box.

You can turn it on at the very start of a new idea, or partway through a conversation the moment you realise "actually, let's think about this properly first."

What It Does — the Hard Rule

Brainstorming puts one firm rule on the agent: produce nothing — no code, no slides, no plan, no document, no draft, nothing — until it has done all three of these, in order:

Explored your intent — what you actually want, why it matters, and whether your request is really one thing or several tangled together.

Surfaced the requirements and constraints — what must be true, what's explicitly out of scope, and how you'll both know it worked.

Presented a design and gotten your explicit approval — the shape of the thing, laid out for you to sign off on.

That "no output until the design is approved" rule is the whole point. It's what stops the agent racing ahead on an assumption.

The Process, Step by Step

1. It explores your intent first

Before any detail questions, the agent takes stock of what you asked for — and restates it if that helps. If your request is secretly several projects in one ("build a platform with chat, billing, and analytics"), it will flag that and help you pick the first piece rather than trying to design everything at once. It also looks for the real goal behind the ask — "I want a date picker" might really be "I want users to never enter a wrong date."

2. It asks one question at a time

This is deliberate and it matters: the agent asks one question per turn, not a wall of five. It prefers multiple-choice when the options are finite ("A, B, or something else?") because that's easier for you to answer, and it leads with a recommendation when it offers you options. The questions focus on purpose (why this matters), constraints (what must hold), success criteria (how you'll know it worked), and audience (who it's for).

3. It presents a design — and waits for a real "yes"

Once it understands enough, it lays out a design — the approach, the pieces, how they fit, the trade-offs, and often 2–3 candidate directions with a recommendation. Then it stops and asks you to approve it.

What counts as approval: an explicit "yes, build that." A vague "ok cool" dropped mid-conversation is not approval — the agent is meant to wait for a clear go-ahead before it produces anything.

It Scales to the Size of the Request

Brainstorming isn't always a long ceremony. The hard rule is "no output until the design is approved," not "always six turns."

Small choice ("which icon set should I use?") → one question, 2–3 options with trade-offs, you approve — done in two turns.

Big, fuzzy feature → the full intent → requirements → design loop runs longer, because it needs to.

The agent right-sizes the depth to what you asked for.

When to Use It — and When Not To

Use Brainstorming when…Skip it when…You're starting something new and aren't 100% sure what you wantYou already know exactly what you want and just want it builtYou want your assumptions challenged before any work beginsIt's a one-line fix or a single questionYou want to compare a few approaches before committingYou've already been through the design

If you already know precisely what you want, brainstorming will slow you down with questions you've answered — reach for it when there's genuine fuzziness to resolve.

What Happens at the End

Once you approve the design, brainstorming hands off to whatever best fits the job:

A multi-step build → Plan Mode (the agent turns the approved design into a plan you approve, then executes it).

A specific artifact → the matching skill (e.g. the slide skill for a deck, the report skill for a report).

Something small → the agent just builds it directly.

Brainstorming is the upstream design phase; it's designed to feed cleanly into the "now let's build it" phase.

Examples

Example 1 — a fuzzy feature idea

You: "I want people outside my org to be able to see certain files." /brainstormingAgent: asks one question (which files? for how long? password-protected?), then the next, surfaces the constraints, proposes 2–3 approaches with trade-offs, presents a design, and asks you to approve it. Only after your "yes" does anything get built.

Example 2 — a quick decision

You: "/brainstorming should the dashboard default to weekly or monthly?" Agent: asks the one question that actually decides it (who's the main viewer?), gives you two options with the trade-off, recommends one — you pick, done.

Common Questions

Does brainstorming write any code or make anything? Not until you've approved a design. That's the entire rule — dialogue first, artifact second.

Can I use it for a quick decision without a long back-and-forth? Yes — it scales down. Small asks resolve in a turn or two.

What if I already know what I want? Then don't turn it on — go straight to building (or to Plan Mode for a multi-step task). Brainstorming is for when there's genuine uncertainty to work through.

Summary

Brainstorming makes the agent a design partner instead of a fast guesser. Turn it on with /brainstorming (or the skill dropdown), and it will explore your intent, agree the requirements, and present a design for your explicit approval — building nothing until you've said "yes, that's it." It scales from a two-turn decision to a full design session, and hands off cleanly to Plan Mode or a build skill once the design is locked.

Help Agent

Skill: Brainstorming