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 run the structured interview in reference/interview-guide.md 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)
• Read reference/interview-guide.md and follow its question sequence
• Skip questions the user already answered in their initial request
• Offer multiple-choice options where the guide provides them
• Only one question per message (two max if closely related)
• Summarize your understanding before moving to approaches

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

Chaining Into Maestro

Brainstorming produces understanding, not documents. The validated design feeds directly into the maestro workflow -- never into standalone files under docs/.

When the design is validated, chain forward:

1. Create the feature: maestro feature-create <name> -- this registers the feature in the maestro tracker
2. Save discovery context: maestro context-write --feature <name> --name brainstorm --content "<validated design>" -- persists the brainstorming output where the planner can reference it
3. Choose the planning path based on complexity:
   • Simple/well-understood: maestro plan-write --feature <name> -- write the plan directly from the brainstorming output
   • Ambitious/multi-component: Load maestro:design or maestro:new-track for deeper discovery and structured spec generation

The brainstorming output becomes the ## Discovery section that plan-write requires. Do not write design docs to docs/plans/ -- that bypasses the maestro workflow and leaves the design disconnected from execution.

Key Principles

• One question at a time - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions
• Multiple choice preferred - Easier to answer than open-ended when possible
• Skip what's known - If the user gave details upfront, acknowledge them and move on
• 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
• Challenge assumptions - Surface fragile assumptions, ask what changes if they fail, offer lean fallback options