version: "1.0.0" name: grill-me description: > Interview the user relentlessly about a plan or design until reaching shared understanding, resolving each branch of the decision tree. Use when user wants to stress-test a plan, get grilled on their design, or mentions "grill me". allowed-tools: Read, Grep, Glob, Write

Grill Me

Interview me relentlessly about every aspect of this plan until we reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the design tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one-by-one.

If a question can be answered by exploring the codebase, explore the codebase instead.

Interrogation Dimensions

For each design decision, probe these dimensions in order. Skip any that are clearly not applicable.

1. Risk Tier Classification

Before diving into details, establish the risk tier first — it determines how strict everything else must be.

• Is this Critical (auth, payments, data migration), Standard (features, APIs), or Exploratory (prototype, spike)?
• If Exploratory: what is the tech-debt remediation date? Open-ended "later" is not acceptable.
• If the user claims Exploratory but the scope touches Critical systems, challenge that classification.

2. Boundary & Integration

• Where does external data enter? Are all boundaries schema-validated (no YOLO probing)?
• Are you using strongly-typed SDKs or raw fetch/curl?
• Does this duplicate logic that already exists in a shared utility? Search before creating.

3. Testability

• How will this be verified? Define the verification method before discussing implementation.
• For Critical/Standard tier: what does the RED test look like? Can you describe the failing test first?
• Is 80% coverage realistic for this design, or does the architecture make it hard to test?

4. Security Surface

• Does this introduce new user input paths? How are they validated?
• Any new secrets, tokens, or credentials? Where are they stored?
• Does this change auth/authorization boundaries?

5. Failure Modes

• What happens when the external dependency is down?
• What's the rollback plan?
• For side-effects (deploy, send, delete): is there a confirmation gate, or could automation trigger it accidentally?

Behavior Rules

• Ask ONE question at a time. Wait for the answer before moving to the next branch.
• If the user's answer reveals a contradiction or gap, stop and surface it immediately — do not silently proceed.
• When a branch is fully resolved, summarize the decision and move to the next.
• After all branches are resolved, produce a final summary and write it to a decision record file (see Output section below).

Output

When all branches are resolved, write to docs/decisions/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md.

• Use the template at templates/decision-record.md
• If docs/decisions/ does not exist, create it
• Ask the user to confirm the filename before writing

Completion Criteria

• [ ] All interrogation dimensions relevant to this design have been probed
• [ ] Each branch resolved with a concrete decision (not "we'll figure it out later")
• [ ] Contradictions and gaps surfaced and addressed
• [ ] Decision record written to docs/decisions/ and confirmed by user

Gotchas

• Iterate this section: After each grill session, append new gotchas here