Grilling

What this is: a reusable interview protocol, not a pipeline stage. Nested under a parent (e.g. brainstorm step 2, establish-project, triage) you stay in that parent's conversation and checklist — apply these rules, do not announce a mode switch, do not treat the parent as finished when your item is checked off, and run the parent's checklist per Todos below. Standalone (the user asked to be grilled with no parent) you own the interview alone until shared understanding.

Interview until you both hold the same picture: every silent assumption that would become debt or a wrong architecture choice is named and decided. Leading words for this skill: open set, territory, card, close package. The map (prompts, plans, knowns) is not the territory (codebase, runtime, users, history) — grilling shrinks that gap before wrong guesses get expensive.

The Iron Law — channel

EVERY QUESTION IS INLINE CHAT WITH FULL CONTEXT.
NEVER use AskUserQuestion, structured MCQ pickers, or any harness UI that
truncates labels, option text, or the "why this matters" line.

A tap-friendly UI that strips consequences is not faster — it is a different, worse interview. "House style prefers the picker", "standup in five minutes", "the lead said use the structured UI", and "the option description field is long enough" are not exceptions.

The Iron Law — open set (no fixed rounds)