Grill Me on Every Design Branch
Force Claude to interview you relentlessly on every branch of a feature's design tree before it writes a line of code.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
That sounds like a complex feature to build. Real-time collaboration involves a lot of moving parts — socket management, conflict resolution, persistence, permissions — and you'll want to think carefully about the architecture. I'd recommend mapping out the design dependencies and asking yourself some tough questions about how different components interact. You'll need to decide on communication protocol, handle edge cases like offline users and permission boundaries, and think about data consistency. Before diving into code, it might be worth having a detailed design conversation. Do you want me to help brainstorm the architecture or identify the key design questions you should answer first?
DESIGN INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT 20 GROUNDED QUESTIONS: 1. Transport layer: WebSocket bidirectional or HTTP polling fallback? 2. Consistency model: Operational transformation (OT) or CRDT? 3. Conflict example: User A renames layer X while User B deletes it — expected outcome? 4. Persistence: every keystroke or batched every 5 seconds? 5. Offline user: edits queue locally, then sync on reconnect? 6. Permission scope: document-level, page-level, or object-level lock? 7. Undo/redo: per-user history or shared history? 8. Notification: toast on every collaborator action or quiet in background? 9. Cursor presence: show live cursors and selections of other users? 10-20. [Codebase-grounded questions: DB schema, auth token refresh, WebSocket reconnect backoff, stale connection cleanup, bandwidth estimate for 10 concurrent users, test strategy...] UNRESOLVED BRANCHES: 3 - Conflict resolution specifics under rapid simultaneous edits - Offline sync strategy for large batch operations - Performance ceiling at 20+ concurrent editors READY TO SPEC.
About this skill
name: grill-me-design-tree description: Force Claude to interview you relentlessly on every branch of a feature's design tree before it writes a line of code. Use when working on grill me on every design branch.
Grill Me on Every Design Branch
Loads a short directive that turns Claude into a design interviewer walking the design tree, resolving one dependency at a time. Explores the codebase when a question can be answered by code, so questions stay grounded in reality. Sessions typically produce 30 to 50 targeted questions and end with a genuinely shared understanding of the feature. Use before starting any non-trivial feature or refactor.
What you get
- Running interview transcript
- Fully resolved design tree
- Codebase-grounded understanding doc
- Numbered unanswered branches
- Ready-to-hand-off spec header
- Followup PRD stub
Customize your output
- Feature description: free text
- Existing research notes: paste or file
- Repo path: dir
- Depth cap on branches: 3, 5, 8
- Language or stack: TypeScript, Swift, Python, Rust, Go, other
- Interview tone: senior peer, socratic
Example output
'16 sequential questions covering document location, UI layout, mode gating, life cycle, edit tool shape, and error handling. Green light to draft the PRD.'
Best for
Engineers, tech leads, PMs pairing with Claude Code on non-trivial features.
Note: Skill body is intentionally tiny. Works best inside plan mode. High confidence.
SKILL.md preview
---
name: grill-me-design-tree
description: Use before starting any non-trivial feature or refactor where requirements are still fuzzy and hidden design decisions need surfacing before code gets written.
version: 1.0.0
category: Engineering
author: AgentVolt
license: proprietary
tags:
- engineering
- p4
---
# Grill Me on Every Design Branch
Turns Claude into a relentless design interviewer that walks a feature's full design tree, resolving one dependency at a time, before any code gets written.
## When to use
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