brainstorming
The front of the pipeline: turn a rough idea into a validated design through natural collaborative dialogue before writing any code (pattern-grilling). Explore project context → ask clarifying questions one at a time (multiple-choice preferred) → propose 2-3 approaches with trade-offs and a recommendation → present the design in sections, getting approval after each → write the design doc → self-review → user-review gate → hand off to sp-writing-plans.
HARD-GATE: “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.” Explicitly rejects the “this is too simple to need a design” excuse — every project, even a config change, goes through the gate (pattern-anti-rationalization). The design can be short, but it must be presented and approved.
Distinctive details: an optional browser-based visual companion offered just-in-time (only when a question is genuinely clearer shown than told, never upfront); a design-for-isolation principle (decompose into small, single-purpose, independently-testable units); and a strict terminal state — the only skill it may invoke next is sp-writing-plans (never a frontend/implementation skill). It writes the validated design to docs/superpowers/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and commits it → artifact-design-md.
Superpowers has no dedicated stage-specify capability: the design doc this skill produces is its spec, and it flows straight into planning — the same align→plan fold as gsd.
See Also
- sp-writing-plans — the mandated next step (the design’s terminal handoff).
- gsd-discuss-phase · mp-grill-me · addy-interview-me · ce-brainstorm · gstack-office-hours — the align/grilling cluster across frameworks.
- pattern-grilling — the Socratic elicitation technique.
- artifact-design-md — the design doc it produces.
- stage-align — the canonical stage this implements.