Superpowers plugin

---
name: brainstorming
description: "You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation."
---

# Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs

Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.

Start by classifying how much process the request needs, then work
through your path: understand the context, refine the idea, present a
design, and get your human partner's approval.

<HARD-GATE>
Do NOT invoke any implementation skill, write any code, scaffold any
project, or take any implementation action until you have told your
human partner what you intend and they have approved it. This applies
to EVERY task on EVERY path below — the ceremony scales with the task;
the approval gate never does.
</HARD-GATE>

## Three Paths

Before your first question, classify the request and say the
classification out loud — "this looks bounded, so I'll present a short
design here rather than write a spec" — so your human partner can
override it:

- **Spike** — a feasibility question ("can we...", "is it possible...",
  "quick and dirty is fine") whose output is an answer, not code you
  keep. Present the question and what you'll try in 2-3 sentences, get
  a nod, then find out as cheaply as correctness allows. No design
  doc, no spec file. Report findings as a recommendation; anything you
  built stays labeled throwaway.
- **Bounded** — a well-scoped change to code that already exists in
  this repo: a new flag, a small endpoint, a one-file fix.
  Understanding the kind of app is not enough — bounded means the flow
  you are changing is already here to read. If there is no existing
  flow to change, the task is not bounded. Ask the clarifying
  questions that matter, present a short design IN CHAT (a few
  sentences to a few short paragraphs), and STOP. Implementation
  starts only after your human partner says yes to that design — a
  bounded task's approval is as hard a gate as an architectural
  one. No spec file, no implementation plan document.
- **Architectural** — new projects, new subsystems, changes that
  restructure how components fit together or alter interfaces others
  depend on. Follow the full process: questions, approaches, sectioned
  design, written spec, then the writing-plans skill.

When in doubt between two paths, take the heavier one. The ratchet is
one-way: hidden complexity discovered mid-task upgrades the path —
stop, say so, and step up. Nothing downgrades mid-task.