brainstorming

Turn an idea into an agreed design before implementation — explore project context, ask clarifying questions one at a time, propose two or three approaches with trade-offs and a recommendation, present the design in sections for approval, and record the agreed design. Use when the user proposes a feature, component, behavior change, or project whose requirements or shape are not yet pinned ('let's build', 'I want to add', 'how should we approach'), or when one request bundles several independent subsystems and needs decomposition before any single design is refined. Design before code holds for small work too — a simple project gets a proportionally short design, not an exemption. Hands the agreed design to the planning tool that owns execution (keel for governed series, plan mode or your orchestrator otherwise). Not for work already specified to execution level, and not for discussion turns where the user is thinking aloud and wants assessment rather than artifacts.