Back to marketplace

Grill Me

Forces Claude to grill you on technical and product requirements before writing any code, surfacing unresolved questions upfront instead of guessing.

Development / Requirementsdevelopmentrequirements
by AgentVoltv1.0.0Published 1y ago
Free to sign up · every skill included with AgentVolt Pro

Before & after

Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.

Prompt“Build a real-time notification system for my app”
Beforegeneric AI agent
I can build a real-time notification system for your app. Here's what I'm thinking: we could use WebSockets for the persistent connection, store notifications in a database, and push them to the client when they arrive. I'd suggest setting up a notification service on the backend that listens for events and broadcasts to connected clients. We could also add a UI component to show notifications as toasts. Should I start with the backend service first, or would you prefer the frontend components? I could also suggest using Socket.io if you're already using Node.js.
Afterwith Grill Me
GRILL: REAL-TIME NOTIFICATION SYSTEM

Hold on—before I write a single line of code, I need clarity on these questions. Each one changes the architecture dramatically.

===== TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS =====

1. Transport layer: Do you need persistent WebSocket connections, or is HTTP polling + periodic refresh acceptable? (WebSocket = complex, polling = simpler, higher latency)

2. Notification volume: How many notifications per user per day? (10 = database query fine; 10,000 = need message queue)

3. Failure tolerance: If a notification is lost mid-delivery, is retry required or fire-and-forget okay? (Retry = complex state machine)

4. Persistence: Should users see past notifications after logout, or only live notifications while connected?

5. Distribution: Do you need to notify 1 user, 1000 users simultaneously, or broadcast to everyone? (1000 users = need fan-out queue)

===== PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS =====

6. Types of notifications: Which use cases matter most? Examples:
   • Transactional (order shipped, payment confirmed)
   • System alerts (maintenance, new feature)
   • Social (friend request, mention)
   → Architecture changes based on this

7. User experience: Should notifications:
   • Persist in an in-app notification center? (Log all)
   • Auto-dismiss after 5 seconds? (Ephemeral)
   • Require user acknowledgment?

8. Mobile support: Does this need to work on iOS/Android, or web only? (Push notifications = whole different system)

===== DATA & INTEGRATION =====

9. Data model: Who triggers notifications?
   • Backend cronjob (batch)?
   • Real user action in another service?
   • External API (payment processor, email service)?
   → Determines what systems need to connect

10. Delivery timing: Can notifications be delayed 30 seconds, or do they need to be instant (< 100ms)?

===== OPERATIONAL =====

11. Monitoring: How will you know if notifications are silently dropped? Do you need audit logs of every notification sent?

12. Scale limit: At what user count do you expect this to break? (10K users = Redis fine; 1M users = message broker required)

===== YOUR ANSWERS WILL DETERMINE =====

• Tech choice: WebSocket vs polling vs Server-Sent Events
• Database: SQL polling vs dedicated queue (RabbitMQ, Kafka)
• Deployment: Single server vs distributed system
• Testing strategy: Mock clock vs integration test environment

Which of these are hardest to answer right now? Let's lock those in first.

About this skill

name: grill-me description: Use when Forces Claude to grill you on technical and product requirements before writing any code, surfacing unresolved questions upfront instead of guessing.

Grill Me

Originally created by TypeScript educator the original author and adopted here, Grill Me makes Claude interrogate the request before building anything — asking about technical requirements, product requirements, and any open questions it has. This prevents Claude from making silent assumptions that surface as rework later. The creator uses it in conjunction with Phased Plan for any feature expected to take multiple milestones, skipping it only for small bug fixes.

What you get

  • Pre-build requirement interrogation, surfaced unresolved questions before coding starts, reduced silent assumption errors, pairs directly with Phased Plan for larger features.

Customize your output

  • Adjust how aggressively it grills (some find it "too intense" on simple asks) — can be dialed back for smaller tasks.

Example output

Before building an AI UGC content feature, Grill Me surfaced 8 unresolved questions about data model and user permissions before any code was written.

Best for

Solo developers and technical founders who want to catch ambiguous requirements before implementation instead of during code review.

SKILL.md preview

SKILL.md
---
name: grill-me
description: Interrogate a feature request for unresolved technical and product requirements before writing any code, surfacing open questions instead of silently guessing.
version: 1.0.0
category: Development / Requirements
author: AgentVolt
license: proprietary
tags:
  - development
  - requirements
  - standard
---

# Grill Me

Interrogate a feature request for unresolved technical and product requirements before writing any code, surfacing open questions instead of silently guessing.

## When to use

… (sign up to view the full skill)
Sign up to view, copy, and install the full skill