Brainstorming (Idea → Design)

What it does

Before building a new feature or system, Claude stops itself from coding. It first reads project context (files, docs, recent commits), then asks one question at a time to nail down purpose, constraints, and success criteria. Next it proposes 2-3 alternative approaches with trade-offs and a recommendation, and presents the design section by section, getting your sign-off on each.

The approved design is written to docs/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and committed to git, then self-reviewed for placeholders, contradictions, ambiguity, and scope. Only after you approve does it build a step-by-step implementation plan. A hard gate forbids writing code or scaffolding before design approval. An optional browser-based "visual companion" is offered just-in-time for genuinely visual questions (mockups, layout comparisons, diagrams).

Who it's for

• Developers burned by AI implementing the wrong thing from vague prompts
• Solo devs and tech leads who want a real spec document as an artifact
• Anyone wanting to make "agree on design first" a habit

Examples

1. "Brainstorm with me: I want an internal document search bot" → guided questions on data sources and auth, then a comparison of vector vs keyword vs hybrid search before the spec is written.
2. "Build me a platform with chat, file storage, billing and analytics" → the skill flags the scope as too large, splits it into sub-projects, and designs only the first one.
3. "Which of these two onboarding wizard layouts is better?" → only at that visual moment does it offer to open a browser tab with side-by-side mockups.

Install the skill I found on Claude Skill Mart.
Copy the skills/brainstorming folder from the GitHub repo feiskyer/claude-code-settings into my ~/.claude/skills/brainstorming/.
When it's done, tell me in one line what this skill can do.