Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs
Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.
Start by understanding the current project context, then ask questions one at a time to refine the idea. Once you understand what you're building, present the design and get user approval.
Do NOT invoke any implementation skill, write any code, scaffold any project, or take any implementation action until you have presented a design and the user has approved it. This applies to EVERY project regardless of perceived simplicity.
Anti-Pattern: "This Is Too Simple To Need A Design"
Every project goes through this process. A todo list, a single-function utility, a config change — all of them. "Simple" projects are where unexamined assumptions cause the most wasted work. The design can be short (a few sentences for truly simple projects), but you MUST present it and get approval.
Checklist
You MUST create a task for each of these items and complete them in order:
- Explore project context — check files, docs, recent commits
- Offer visual companion (if topic will involve visual questions) — this is its own message, not combined with a clarifying question. See the Visual Companion section below.
- Ask clarifying questions — one at a time, understand purpose/constraints/success criteria
- Propose 2-3 approaches — with trade-offs and your recommendation
- Present design — in sections scaled to their complexity, get user approval after each section
- Write design doc — save to your specified plan file in .opencode/plans/.
- Spec review loop — dispatch spec-document-reviewer subagent; fix issues and re-dispatch until approved (max 5 iterations, then surface to human)
- User reviews written spec — ask user to review the spec file before proceeding
Process Flow
digraph brainstorming {
"Explore project context" [shape=box];
"Visual questions ahead?" [shape=diamond];
"Offer Visual Companion\n(own message, no other content)" [shape=box];
"Ask clarifying questions" [shape=box];
"Propose 2-3 approaches" [shape=box];
"Present design sections" [shape=box];
"User approves design?" [shape=diamond];
"Write design doc" [shape=box];
"Spec review loop" [shape=box];
"Spec review passed?" [shape=diamond];
"User reviews spec?" [shape=diamond];
"Explore project context" -> "Visual questions ahead?";
"Visual questions ahead?" -> "Ask clarifying questions" [label="no"];
"Ask clarifying questions" -> "Propose 2-3 approaches";
"Propose 2-3 approaches" -> "Present design sections";
"Present design sections" -> "User approves design?";
"User approves design?" -> "Present design sections" [label="no, revise"];
"User approves design?" -> "Write design doc" [label="yes"];
"Write design doc" -> "Spec review loop";
"Spec review loop" -> "Spec review passed?";
"Spec review passed?" -> "Spec review loop" [label="issues found,\nfix and re-dispatch"];
"Spec review passed?" -> "User reviews spec?" [label="approved"];
"User reviews spec?" -> "Write design doc" [label="changes requested"];
}
The terminal state is invoking writing-plans. Do NOT invoke frontend-design, mcp-builder, or any other implementation skill. The ONLY skill you invoke after brainstorming is writing-plans.
The Process
Understanding the idea:
- Check out the current project state first (files, docs, recent commits)
- Before asking detailed questions, assess scope: if the request describes multiple independent subsystems (e.g., "build a platform with chat, file storage, billing, and analytics"), flag this immediately. Don't spend questions refining details of a project that needs to be decomposed first.
- If the project is too large for a single spec, help the user decompose into sub-projects: what are the independent pieces, how do they relate, what order should they be built? Then brainstorm the first sub-project through the normal design flow. Each sub-project gets its own spec → plan → implementation cycle.
- For appropriately-scoped projects, ask questions one at a time to refine the idea
- Prefer multiple choice questions when possible, but open-ended is fine too
- Only one question per message - if a topic needs more exploration, break it into multiple questions
- Focus on understanding: purpose, constraints, success criteria
Exploring approaches:
- Propose 2-3 different approaches with trade-offs
- Present options conversationally with your recommendation and reasoning
- Lead with your recommended option and explain why
Presenting the design:
- Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design
- Scale each section to its complexity: a few sentences if straightforward, up to 200-300 words if nuanced
- Ask after each section whether it looks right so far
- Cover: architecture, components, data flow, error handling, testing
- Be ready to go back and clarify if something doesn't make sense
Design for isolation and clarity:
- Break the system into smaller units that each have one clear purpose, communicate through well-defined interfaces, and can be understood and tested independently
- For each unit, you should be able to answer: what does it do, how do you use it, and what does it depend on?
- Can someone understand what a unit does without reading its internals? Can you change the internals without breaking consumers? If not, the boundaries need work.
- Smaller, well-bounded units are also easier for you to work with - you reason better about code you can hold in context at once, and your edits are more reliable when files are focused. When a file grows large, that's often a signal that it's doing too much.
Working in existing codebases:
- Explore the current structure before proposing changes. Follow existing patterns.
- Where existing code has problems that affect the work (e.g., a file that's grown too large, unclear boundaries, tangled responsibilities), include targeted improvements as part of the design - the way a good developer improves code they're working in.
- Don't propose unrelated refactoring. Stay focused on what serves the current goal.
After the Design
Documentation:
- Write the validated design (spec) to your designated plan file in .opencode/plans/.
- (User preferences for spec location override this default)
- Use elements-of-style:writing-clearly-and-concisely skill if available
Spec Review Loop:
After writing the spec document:
- Dispatch spec-document-reviewer subagent (see spec-document-reviewer-prompt.md)
- If Issues Found: fix, re-dispatch, repeat until Approved
- If loop exceeds 5 iterations, surface to human for guidance
User Review Gate:
After the spec review loop passes, ask the user to review the written spec before proceeding:
"Spec written to <path>. Please review it and let me know if you want to make any changes before we start writing out the implementation plan."
Wait for the user's response. If they request changes, make them and re-run the spec review loop. Only proceed once the user approves.
Implementation:
- Invoke the writing-plans skill to create a detailed implementation plan
- Do NOT invoke any other skill. writing-plans is the next step.
Key Principles
- One question at a time - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions
- Multiple choice preferred - Easier to answer than open-ended when possible
- YAGNI ruthlessly - Remove unnecessary features from all designs
- Explore alternatives - Always propose 2-3 approaches before settling
- Incremental validation - Present design, get approval before moving on
- Be flexible - Go back and clarify when something doesn't make sense
