exploring-ideas

Exploring Ideas — Deep Research + Brainstorming

Help the user explore a topic through deep research and/or divergent brainstorming, and capture the result as an exploration artifact — a cited briefing and/or idea-landscape. This skill deliberately does not converge to a spec. Moving toward building anything is always the user's call.

Announce when you start: "I'm using the exploring-ideas skill to explore this with you — no spec, just research and ideas."

This skill EXPLORES. It MUST NOT produce a spec, requirements, locked decisions, acceptance criteria, an implementation plan, or any implementation action. The only artifact is an exploration document. Moving toward building is ALWAYS user-initiated — offer the handoff to `brainstorming`, never perform it automatically.

Anti-Pattern: "They obviously want me to just build/decide it"

No. The user invoked exploration. Surfacing the option space, the evidence, and the tensions IS the deliverable. Declaring a winner, writing requirements, or starting to code defeats the purpose. If the user later says "ok, let's build the third one," offer the brainstorming handoff — do not silently switch modes.

Two Dials

These are orthogonal — set both:

• Emphasis (auto-detected) — what kind of work: research-heavy ↔ ideation-heavy ↔ blended.
• Intensity (--wild 0.1–1.0, default 0.5) — how far past the obvious the ideation pushes.

Checklist

Create a TodoWrite item per step and complete in order:

1. Detect emphasis & intensity — infer research-vs-ideation lean from the request; read --wild (or a bare number) for intensity, else default 0.5. Confirm emphasis with ONE question only if genuinely ambiguous.
2. Light scoping — 2–4 AskUserQuestion questions to bound the exploration (see below). Keep it light; exploration stays open.
3. Offer Visual Companion (conditional, own message) — only if visual output (idea-landscape, option/cluster map, mind map, comparison matrix) is likely. See Visual Companion.
4. Research loop — Plan → Search → Reflect → Iterate, weighted by emphasis. See Research Engine.
5. Divergent ideation pass — technique files + quota + iterate-past-obvious, weighted by emphasis & intensity. See Divergent Ideation Engine.
6. Challenge pass — steelman + strongest counter-argument + "what would disprove this" for each surviving direction/cluster.
7. Synthesize the adaptive artifact — using exploration-artifact-template.md.
8. Auto-save — write to docs/quirk/explorations/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md with the NOT-a-spec banner.
9. Close with optional handoff — recap + a user-initiated offer to carry a direction into brainstorming → writing-plans.

Process Flow

digraph exploring {
  "Detect emphasis & intensity" [shape=box];
  "Light scoping (2-4 Q)" [shape=box];
  "Offer Visual Companion\n(own message, conditional)" [shape=box];
  "Research loop\n(Plan->Search->Reflect->Iterate)" [shape=box];
  "Divergent ideation pass\n(techniques + quota + iterate-past-obvious)" [shape=box];
  "Challenge pass\n(steelman + counter + disprove)" [shape=box];
  "Synthesize adaptive artifact" [shape=box];
  "Auto-save (NOT-a-spec banner)" [shape=box];
  "Close: optional user-initiated handoff" [shape=doublecircle];

  "Detect emphasis & intensity" -> "Light scoping (2-4 Q)";
  "Light scoping (2-4 Q)" -> "Offer Visual Companion\n(own message, conditional)";
  "Offer Visual Companion\n(own message, conditional)" -> "Research loop\n(Plan->Search->Reflect->Iterate)";
  "Research loop\n(Plan->Search->Reflect->Iterate)" -> "Divergent ideation pass\n(techniques + quota + iterate-past-obvious)";
  "Divergent ideation pass\n(techniques + quota + iterate-past-obvious)" -> "Research loop\n(Plan->Search->Reflect->Iterate)" [label="gaps surfaced by ideation"];
  "Divergent ideation pass\n(techniques + quota + iterate-past-obvious)" -> "Challenge pass\n(steelman + counter + disprove)";
  "Challenge pass\n(steelman + counter + disprove)" -> "Synthesize adaptive artifact";
  "Synthesize adaptive artifact" -> "Auto-save (NOT-a-spec banner)";
  "Auto-save (NOT-a-spec banner)" -> "Close: optional user-initiated handoff";
}

The research loop and divergent pass are weighted by emphasis — one may be brief — and feed each other: research grounds ideation; ideation surfaces new gaps to research.

Emphasis Auto-Detection

Signals in the request	Lean	Effect
research, investigate, find, sources, evidence, compare, "what is", "state of"	Research-heavy	Deeper research loop (more rounds / deep-research-agent); short ideation pass
brainstorm, ideas, "what if", "ways to", "could we", imagine, riff	Ideation-heavy	Stronger divergent pass; research loop kept to grounding breadth
mixed / unclear	Blended	Balanced; ONE quick confirm question only if genuinely ambiguous

Intensity Dial (--wild)

Orthogonal to emphasis. Default 0.5; user-settable and adjustable mid-session ("dial it up" / "keep it grounded").

Range	Label	Behavior
0.1–0.3	Grounded	Adjacent, low-risk variations; mostly conventional framing; quota ≥3
0.4–0.6	Exploratory (default 0.5)	Genuine divergence; cross-domain analogies welcome; quota ≥5
0.7–0.9	Bold	Unconventional, contrarian, risk-tolerant; provocation techniques fire; quota ≥7
1.0	Radical	No filter — provocative directions that would "unsettle a boardroom"; full technique set; as many as genuinely land

Intensity modulates idea count/quota, unconventionality, risk tolerance, and which techniques fire.

Invariant — the bar that does NOT move with intensity: every idea must still pass the insight-pairing quality gate, factual claims stay accurate, and the no-spec HARD-GATE holds. High intensity yields wilder grounded ideas, never noise.

Light Scoping

AskUserQuestion, recommended-option-first, no "you decide". 2–4 questions, kept light so exploration stays open.

• Research-leaning: depth (quick scan / standard / deep multi-round), recency window, source preferences or exclusions, the curiosity/decision it serves.
• Ideation-leaning: the goal/problem, hard constraints, what "good" looks like, directions already considered (to avoid re-treading).

Capture any "we should also build…" asides into a Deferred / Out-of-scope note rather than absorbing them — this is exploration, not planning.

Research Engine

Plan → Search → Reflect → Iterate. Reuse the existing agent types (do not reinvent):

1. Plan — decompose the scoped topic into facets / sub-questions.
2. Search (breadth) — dispatch parallel web-research-agent (haiku) across facets in a SINGLE message.
3. Reflect — identify gaps, contradictions, unanswered questions.
4. Iterate (depth) — for deep requests, spawn deep-research-agent (sonnet, depth=2) on the highest-value gaps; loop 1–3 gap-driven rounds. Stop when marginal new information drops off (guard against both premature stop AND runaway).
5. Provenance + anti-hallucination — keep a claim→source map; only sourced claims enter the artifact. Mark anything unverifiable explicitly.

Fallbacks: if deep-research-agent is unavailable, substitute two parallel web-research-agent calls. If research is offline entirely, proceed and mark findings "(offline — unverified)", leaning on the ideation engine; record the gap in the artifact.

Divergent Ideation Engine

Intensity-aware. Read the relevant technique file(s) from references/techniques/ ONLY when selected (progressive disclosure), run them, then filter through the quality gate.

• Technique toolkit (references/techniques/*.md) — each follows When to Use → The Method → Example → Why It Works. Select the 1–2 most relevant; Bold/Radical intensities add the disruptive ones.
  • Classic: scamper.md, analogical-transfer.md, first-principles.md, assumption-reversal.md
  • Disruptive: extreme-casing.md, stream-dump.md, deliberately-wrong.md, contrarian-inversion.md, overlooked-value.md, radical-simplification.md, the-avoided-idea.md
• Quota — surface N distinct directions before drilling into any one (N scales with intensity: Grounded ≥3 → Radical "as many as genuinely land").
• Iterate-past-obvious — after the first pass, explicitly push for more unconventional variants and discard clichés (first ideas reflect training-data defaults).
• Insight-pairing (required) — every surviving direction carries a one-line grounded "why this might actually work." A direction with no defensible insight is not a direction.
• Quality gate (explicit REJECT) — before a direction enters the artifact it must clear: clichéd / obvious? → REJECT. Weird with no insight underneath ("random ≠ creative")? → REJECT. A restatement of an existing direction? → REJECT or merge.
• Grounding — seed directions with the research loop's findings so ideas are informed, not free-floating.

Challenge Pass

For each surviving direction / finding cluster: steelman it, then surface the strongest counter-argument and "what would disprove this / why might this fail." Light and constructive — the goal is honesty, not demolition. Resists sycophancy; AI will not volunteer challenge unless structurally prompted. Captured into the artifact's Challenge notes.

The Artifact

Synthesize using exploration-artifact-template.md and auto-save to docs/quirk/explorations/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md. It opens with a NOT-a-spec banner and contains: Framing · What was explored · Findings / Idea landscape (each direction insight-paired, NO winner declared) · Tensions & trade-offs · Challenge notes · Open questions & gaps · Sources. It contains NO "Decisions Locked", requirements, or implementation steps — by gate.

Remind the user to add .quirk/ to .gitignore if they used the Visual Companion (its session screens live under .quirk/exploring-ideas/).

Close: Optional Handoff

End with a short recap, then:

"This is exploration only. If you later want to turn a direction into something buildable, invoke quirk:brainstorming → writing-plans. Say the word and I'll carry [direction] over."

Never automatic. If the user asks for a plan/spec mid-session, honor them (user instructions outrank the skill) by offering this handoff rather than silently producing a spec inside this skill.

Visual Companion

A browser companion for idea-landscapes, option/cluster maps, mind maps, and comparison matrices — useful when the output is genuinely visual. It runs on the shared Agent Isles bridge (bin/agent_isles.py), the same one the brainstorming skill uses; there is nothing to copy.

Offer it once, in its own message (no other content), only when you anticipate visual output:

"Some of what we explore might land better as a picture — an idea map, a cluster view, a comparison matrix. I can render those in a local browser tab as we go. It's still new and a bit token-intensive. Want to try it? (Requires opening a local URL.)"

If they accept, read visual-companion.md for the full mechanics. Decide per question whether the browser beats the terminal: browser for visual artifacts (maps, matrices, mockups), terminal for text choices and conceptual questions. Screens live under .quirk/exploring-ideas/<session>/.

Key Principles

• Explore, don't converge — the HARD-GATE is the whole point. No spec, no winner, no code.
• Two dials, set both — emphasis (auto) and intensity (--wild).
• Hold the insight bar constant — wilder at high intensity, never noisier.
• Research in parallel, never sequentially — same-phase agents ship in one message.
• Insight-pair every direction — the grounded "why" is mandatory.
• Challenge actively — steelman then attack; resist sycophancy.
• Preserve tensions — document where directions conflict; don't resolve them.
• The only onward skill is brainstorming, and only if the user asks.