Grilling
Interview the user relentlessly until every branch of the design tree is resolved. This is the reusable interview primitive. Orchestrators (interview, shape) invoke it; they own grounding, artifacts, and routing.
Contract
Inputs:
- A plan, decision, idea, or design question
- Optional repo or docs context already loaded by the calling skill
Outputs:
- Settled decisions across the design tree
- Remaining open questions only when a fact-finding sub-agent is still running
Creates/Modifies:
- None. Calling skills persist briefs, glossaries, or issues.
External Side Effects:
- Read-only lookups to settle facts. No tracker writes, no code edits.
Confirmation Required:
- Before acting on the settled tree. Stop at a shared understanding; do not implement.
Delegates To:
- None. Fact-finding may dispatch a read-only exploration sub-agent.
Design tree
Map the topic as a design tree: every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it.
The frontier is every decision whose prerequisites are already settled — the questions that can be asked now without guessing at answers not yet heard.
Work the tree in rounds. Ask the whole frontier in one round. Wait for answers before the next round.
Round format
Number each frontier question. Recommend an answer so the user can accept it in a word.
**Q1 — <question title>**: <question body, including choices when they exist>
Recommended: <recommended answer>
A question whose answer depends on another question still open in this round belongs to a later round, not this one.
Facts vs decisions
Finding facts is the agent's job. When a frontier question needs a fact from the environment (filesystem, tracker, docs), dispatch a sub-agent to find it. Do not ask the user for anything that can be looked up.
Do not block the rest of the frontier on that lookup. A running exploration is an unsettled prerequisite, so only questions downstream of it wait — ask the rest of the frontier now.
Decisions are the user's. Put each to them and wait.
Done when
The frontier is empty: every branch of the design tree visited, nothing left silently assumed.
Do not act on the tree until the user confirms a shared understanding.