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.

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:

1. Explore project context — check files, docs, recent commits
2. Offer the visual companion just-in-time — NOT upfront.
3. Ask clarifying questions — one at a time, understand purpose/constraints/success criteria
4. Propose 2-3 approaches — with trade-offs and your recommendation
5. Present design — in sections scaled to their complexity, get user approval after each section
6. Write design doc — save to docs/superpowers/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and commit
7. Spec self-review — quick inline check for placeholders, contradictions, ambiguity, scope
8. User reviews written spec — ask user to review the spec file before proceeding
9. Transition to implementation — invoke writing-plans skill to create implementation plan

Process Flow

digraph brainstorming {
    "Explore project context" [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 self-review\n(fix inline)" [shape=box];
    "User reviews spec?" [shape=diamond];
    "Invoke writing-plans skill" [shape=doublecircle];

"Explore project context" -> "Ask clarifying questions";
    "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 self-review\n(fix inline)";
    "Spec self-review\n(fix inline)" -> "User reviews spec?";
    "User reviews spec?" -> "Write design doc" [label="changes requested"];
    "User reviews spec?" -> "Invoke writing-plans skill" [label="approved"];
}

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, flag this immediately.
• If the project is too large for a single spec, help the user decompose into sub-projects.
• For appropriately-scoped projects, ask questions one at a time to refine the idea.

Exploring approaches:

• Propose 2-3 different approaches with trade-offs.
• Present options conversationally with your recommendation and reasoning.

Presenting the design:

• Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design.
• Scale each section to its complexity.
• Cover: architecture, components, data flow, error handling, testing.

Design for isolation and clarity:

• Break the system into smaller units that each have one clear purpose.
• For each unit, you should be able to answer: what does it do, how do you use it, and what does it depend on?

Working in existing codebases:

• Explore the current structure before proposing changes.
• Where existing code has problems, include targeted improvements as part of the design.

After the Design

Documentation:

• Write the validated design (spec) to docs/superpowers/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md
• Commit the design document to git

Spec Self-Review: After writing the spec document, look at it with fresh eyes:

1. Placeholder scan: Any "TBD", "TODO", incomplete sections?
2. Internal consistency: Do any sections contradict each other?
3. Scope check: Is this focused enough for a single implementation?
4. Ambiguity check: Could any requirement be interpreted two different ways?

User Review Gate: After the spec review loop passes, ask the user to review the written spec before proceeding.

"Spec written and committed to <path>. Please review it and let me know if you want to make any changes before we start writing out the implementation plan."

Implementation:

• Invoke the writing-plans skill to create a detailed implementation plan.

Key Principles

• One question at a time
• Multiple choice preferred
• YAGNI ruthlessly
• Explore alternatives
• Incremental validation
• Be flexible

Visual Companion

A browser-based companion for showing mockups, diagrams, and visual options during brainstorming.