home / skills / openclaw / skills / brainstorming
This skill guides collaborative brainstorming to turn ideas into designs by asking targeted questions and presenting incremental design sections.
npx playbooks add skill openclaw/skills --skill brainstormingReview the files below or copy the command above to add this skill to your agents.
---
name: brainstorming
description: "You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation."
---
# Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs
## Overview
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 in small sections (200-300 words), checking after each section whether it looks right so far.
## The Process
**Understanding the idea:**
- Check out the current project state first (files, docs, recent commits)
- Ask questions one at a time to refine the idea
- Prefer multiple choice questions when possible, but open-ended is fine too
- Only one question per message - if a topic needs more exploration, break it into multiple questions
- Focus on understanding: purpose, constraints, success criteria
**Exploring approaches:**
- Propose 2-3 different approaches with trade-offs
- Present options conversationally with your recommendation and reasoning
- Lead with your recommended option and explain why
**Presenting the design:**
- Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design
- Break it into sections of 200-300 words
- Ask after each section whether it looks right so far
- Cover: architecture, components, data flow, error handling, testing
- Be ready to go back and clarify if something doesn't make sense
## After the Design
**Documentation:**
- Write the validated design to `docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md`
- Use elements-of-style:writing-clearly-and-concisely skill if available
- Commit the design document to git
**Implementation (if continuing):**
- Ask: "Ready to set up for implementation?"
- Use superpowers:using-git-worktrees to create isolated workspace
- Use superpowers:writing-plans to create detailed implementation plan
## Key Principles
- **One question at a time** - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions
- **Multiple choice preferred** - Easier to answer than open-ended when possible
- **YAGNI ruthlessly** - Remove unnecessary features from all designs
- **Explore alternatives** - Always propose 2-3 approaches before settling
- **Incremental validation** - Present design in sections, validate each
- **Be flexible** - Go back and clarify when something doesn't make sense
This skill guides collaborative brainstorming before any creative or engineering work. It helps clarify intent, constraints, and success criteria, then turns validated ideas into incremental designs and actionable plans. It enforces one-question-at-a-time interactions and incremental validation to avoid wasted work.
The skill inspects project context and asks targeted, single-question prompts to refine requirements. It proposes 2–3 alternative approaches with trade-offs, recommends one, and then produces the design in small sections for iterative validation. After the design is approved, it creates a documented plan and offers to prepare the workspace for implementation.
How many questions will the skill ask before drafting a design?
It asks as many single, focused questions as needed to establish purpose, constraints, and success criteria—typically 3–8 short questions.
What form do the delivered designs take?
Designs are delivered in concise, validated sections covering architecture, components, data flow, error handling, and testing, plus a follow-up implementation checklist.