Brief Before Asking

Purpose

When an agent needs to involve the user in a complex engineering decision, the failure mode is rarely "agent said too little" or "agent said too much." It's almost always "agent started at the wrong abstraction level."

The agent defaults to implementation-level detail with embedded jargon. The user needs to start from system-level understanding with business semantics. Without a bridge, no amount of detail will land.

brief-before-asking enforces a 6-block briefing structure where Mental Model leads — the plain-English scaffolding that lets all subsequent technical content land.

Three Trigger Modes

Mode A — Proactive

Triggered by: Agent self-detects "I'm about to ask user about a non-trivial decision."

Output: Full 6-block briefing → ends with specific request.

Mini-example — index decision briefing (compressed):