Introduction and Core Concept
The brainstorming skill is designed to act as a mandatory precursor to any creative implementation work. It solves the common pitfall of “unexamined assumptions causing wasted work,” especially in seemingly simple projects. The core goal is to force a structured, collaborative dialogue that transforms vague ideas into fully formed designs and specifications before a single line of code is written.
Core Concept
Always design before implementing. By exploring context, asking clarifying questions, and writing a formal specification, this skill prevents wasted effort and ensures alignment between user intent and the final architecture.
Installation and Usage Guide
https://github.com/obra/superpowers
Workflow Analysis (SOP)
- Explore project context: The AI is forced to check existing files, docs, and commits before doing anything else, ensuring the design fits the current architecture.
- Offer visual companion: For UI/UX tasks, it explicitly asks if visual mockups are needed, separating visual and conceptual thinking.
- Ask clarifying questions: Limits the AI to asking one question at a time to prevent overwhelming the user and to deeply understand constraints.
- Propose multiple approaches: Requires presenting 2-3 different solutions with trade-offs, preventing tunnel vision on the first available idea.
- Present design and get approval: Breaks the design into manageable sections and mandates explicit user approval before proceeding.
- Write and review spec: Forces the creation of a formal markdown specification document and an internal “self-review” for placeholders or ambiguities.
- Transition to implementation: Strictly dictates that the terminal state is invoking a planning skill (
writing-plans), creating a hard gate against premature coding.
Skill Design Evaluation
- Strengths of SOP Integration: Enforces a strict order of operations before implementation. The inclusion of a formal “Spec self-review” step ensures the AI validates its own output for placeholders and ambiguities before requesting user feedback.
- Potential Limitations: The strict “one question at a time” constraint may increase interaction time. Mandating a full markdown specification document can be unnecessary for minor tasks.
- What Makes a Good Skill: It clearly defines anti-patterns (what not to do) and establishes a deterministic state machine for the interaction, effectively restricting premature code generation.