shipyard-brainstorming

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# 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.

**Shipyard integration:** This skill is the foundation of `/shipyard:init`. When initializing a project, brainstorming drives the requirements gathering phase - exploring what needs to be built before any plan is written.

## 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 shipyard:git-workflow to create isolated workspace
- Use shipyar