grill

Grill

Use this skill only when the user explicitly asks for grilling plus durable documentation or directly invokes this skill; the agents coordinator handing it an unclear goal, or one decision needing the user's confirmation, before its plan is a direct invocation (its question is the user's judgement — target, measure, scope — that repository facts shape but never answer), and there the durable record is the project's own PROJECT.md or library/ file, never a repository doc. Complexity, ambiguity, or a possible need for docs alone never activates it. This skill carries its own interview and documentation contract. Do not load or invoke domain-modeling at runtime.

Interview Contract

1. Research discoverable facts in the repository, issue, docs, and code before asking the user. Ask only for judgments or facts that cannot be discovered.
2. Ask one decision-forcing question at a time. State the recommended answer and the reason briefly, then wait for the answer.
3. Ask every interview question in plain text as an ordinary assistant response. Do not use a question tool.
   • When a bounded decision benefits from 2-3 short, mutually exclusive choices, list them in plain text with the recommended answer first.
   • Invite the user to choose, modify, or discuss the choices instead of forcing a structured selection.
4. Use comparison tables only when the user explicitly requested one or the question concerns agent-product behavior, such as Claude Code versus Codex.
5. Follow dependent decisions until the skill decides the decision tree is exhausted. Never ask a final "are we done?" meta-question.
6. Summarize the settled contract: goals, non-goals, decisions, constraints, risks, validation, and unresolved items.

Background formal evidence

When the target project provides an applicable formal checker, follow its local documentation to prepare the declared interview input and run the check before choosing the outline and after relevant answers or source changes. Read the completed invocation's results and source/input binding, then use unresolved obligations and counterexamples to revise the next question. Recheck changed inputs. Reuse answers only within their supported scope and conditions, preserving independent choices. After each answer, write its source and applicable scope into the declared input and the journal or Draft decision; rerun and record the revised remaining obligations before the next outline. A possible model assignment is not human acceptance; bounded coverage does not cover unlisted questions. Missing or stale evidence limits dependent conclusions while independent permitted work continues. Ask one practical question in the user's language, with ordinary choices and consequences; explain formal techniques when asked.

Scope Contract

The interview is not finished until the settled contract fixes the scope in writing and the user accepts that text explicitly:

1. Artifact-level boundary. Name what the deliverable is (the documents, directories, PRs, or code paths in scope) and the artifact classes that are out of scope, such as follow-on specs, tests, runtime code, or task plans.
2. Done means. A short checklist of the observable conditions that finish the work: landed commits, closed issues, verified evidence. Nothing outside the checklist is a completion dependency.
3. Staged designs are approved one stage at a time. If a decision record describes later stages (an ADR that stages Constitution, spec, or runtime changes), record them as deferred proposals; accepting the record never approves the later stages. Each stage returns for its own interview.
4. Execution words never widen scope. "Go", "do it all", or "land 1-5" authorize only the accepted boundary. When later work would add an artifact class, a new PR, or a task program outside the boundary, stop before producing it and take one of exactly two paths: obtain the owner's explicit approval of the wider boundary, recorded on the owning issue, or move the extra work into a follow-up issue that starts its own interview. Never build first and ask afterwards.

Post the accepted scope contract where the executing lane and its supervisors can read it (for repository work, the owning issue), quoting the acceptance. This comment is lane-coordination evidence, not a decision record: it quotes the user's exact words with channel and time; the durable decision lives in the record this skill writes, never in the comment.

Ending the interview never authorizes implementation. Implement only after a separate explicit user request.

Documentation Contract

1. Before the first question, resolve the target document from the user's named target and the repository's existing documentation conventions. Inspect local instructions, indexes, specs, ADRs, glossaries, and nearby docs. If the target is undeterminable, ask one question. Never invent a universal docs/grilling/<date>.md location.
2. Create or update the target as Draft. Write each settled decision immediately as Draft instead of waiting for the interview to end. Keep unresolved questions visibly marked.
3. If interrupted or cancelled, preserve the Draft and all file edits, mark unresolved questions, and never auto-revert documentation changes.
4. Read detailed CONTEXT.md, ADR, glossary, or other format references only when that document type is actually being written.
5. Normal Write/Edit tool events are the live proof of documentation work. Do not emit duplicate Updated <path> status lines.
6. An explicit docs request is a hard completion condition: the session cannot finish successfully without a useful documentation creation or update. "No docs needed" with zero file changes never satisfies it.
7. Only explicit user acceptance may change a document from Draft to Final. Exhausting the decision tree does not imply acceptance.
8. In the final response, list every changed documentation path and whether it stayed Draft or became Final.

Credit

This skill's name and interview approach — one recommended answer per question, repository facts researched instead of asked, decisions written down as they settle — come from the grilling skill (and the former grill-with-docs skill) by Matt Pocock (@mattpocockuk), https://github.com/mattpocock/skills. The skill text shipped here is our own. See the package's CREDITS.md.