> **grilling** — chapter 30 of 35 in [mattpocock/skills](https://skillsdocs.com/mattpocock/skills).
>
> Book (all chapters, one file): https://skillsdocs.com/mattpocock/skills.md
> Machine manifest: https://skillsdocs.com/mattpocock/skills/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json
> Install the book: `npx skills add mattpocock/skills`
> Upstream: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/productivity/grilling/SKILL.md @ `main`
> Raw bytes, no header: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattpocock/skills/main/skills/productivity/grilling/SKILL.md
> Base for relative paths: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattpocock/skills/main/skills/productivity/grilling/
> Licence: MIT — https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html
>
> Bundled files (1), referenced from this skill's directory:
>   - `agents/openai.yaml` — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattpocock/skills/main/skills/productivity/grilling/agents/openai.yaml
>
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<!-- Verbatim upstream SKILL.md follows, YAML frontmatter included. -->

---
name: grilling
description: Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea. Use when the user wants to stress-test their thinking, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.
---

Interview the user relentlessly until you reach a shared understanding. Map this as a **design tree**: every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it.

Work the tree in **rounds**. The **frontier** is every decision whose prerequisites are already settled — the questions you can ask _now_ without guessing at answers you haven't heard yet. Ask the whole frontier in one round: number each question and give your recommended answer. Then wait for the user's answers before the next round.

Each question should be formatted like so:

```
❓ **Q1** - **<question title>**: <question body, might be multiple paragraphs, including multiple choices>

➡️ <your recommended answer>
```

Each round the user answers reshapes the tree — settled decisions push the frontier outward and unblock questions that depended on them. Recompute the frontier and ask the next round. A question whose answer depends on another question still open in this round belongs to a _later_ round, not this one.

Finding _facts_ is your job, never the user's. When a frontier question needs a fact from the environment (filesystem, tools, etc.), dispatch a sub-agent to find it — don't ask the user for anything you could look up yourself. Don't block on it: a running exploration is an unsettled prerequisite, so only the questions downstream of it wait for the sub-agent to report — ask the rest of the frontier now. The _decisions_ are the user's — put each to them and wait.

The session is done when the frontier is empty: every branch of the design tree visited, nothing left silently assumed. Do not act on it until the user confirms you have reached a shared understanding.