00-intake-refine

Intake & Refine

Purpose

Convert a vague idea into a precise, challengeable proposal that can become a PRD. The agent must NOT proceed past this skill if the result is still hand-wavy.

When to invoke

• First step of /superbuilder:superbuild.
• Any time the user says "build me X" without acceptance criteria.
• After a failed run where retrospect shows the original spec was unclear.

Required outputs (write to .superbuilder/intake.md)

1. One-line product statement — "for , this so that ."
2. Three success criteria — observable, falsifiable. Not "users will love it."
3. Out of scope — bullet list of things the user might assume but we will not build.
4. Primary user(s) — concrete persona, not "everyone."
5. Top 3 risks — security, legal, product, technical. Each with a 1-line mitigation.
6. Constraints — language(s), runtime, deployment target, budget for tokens/time.
7. Existing project? — yes/no. If yes, capture target branch, package manager (detected from lockfiles), CI provider.

Grilling protocol

Use AskUserQuestion for blocking questions ONLY. Pick the smallest set that resolves ambiguity. Bad questions ("what color?") are forbidden. Good questions:

• "Will this app store user data? If yes: PII or just preferences?"
• "Should this run as a CLI, web app, or library?"
• "Is anyone else going to deploy this, or is it personal?"
• "Free or paid? If paid, are payments in scope?"

Push-back rules — refuse to continue if any are true

• Idea is overbuilt: user asks for microservices/k8s/distributed for a single-user toy app. Counter-propose monolith.
• Idea is legally risky: scraping behind login walls, evading rate limits, processing health/financial data without compliance plan.
• Idea is security-naive: "build me an auth system" without clarifying who issues tokens, where keys live, what threat model applies.
• Idea is physically impossible: "real-time low-latency translation in 50 languages, run locally on a laptop, free."
• User refuses to specify out-of-scope: that means scope creep is guaranteed.

When refusing, propose 1–3 narrower variants the user could choose instead.

Source basis

This skill merges Addy Osmani idea-refine (structured divergent/convergent thinking) with Matt Pocock grill-me (relentless interview discipline). Do not quote either source verbatim — use the patterns.

Anti-rationalization rules

• "The user just wants something quick" — STILL grill. Quick + vague = scope explosion.
• "I can fill in defaults" — only after the three success criteria are pinned. Defaults for missing constraints are fine; defaults for missing success criteria are not.
• "It's just a prototype" — prototypes also have a primary user and a scope edge.

Hand-off

When .superbuilder/intake.md is complete and the user has confirmed it, hand off to 01-context-sync. Do NOT skip ahead to PRD.