Brainstorming Ideas Into Designs
Overview
Help turn ideas into fully formed designs and specs through natural collaborative dialogue.
Start by understanding the current project context, then ask questions one at a time to refine the idea. Once you understand what you're building, present the design in small sections (200-300 words), checking after each section whether it looks right so far.
The Process
Understanding the Idea:
- •Check out the current project state first (files, docs, recent commits)
- •Ask questions one at a time to refine the idea
- •Prefer multiple choice questions when possible, but open-ended is fine too
- •Only one question per message - if a topic needs more exploration, break it into multiple questions
- •Focus on understanding: purpose, constraints, success criteria
Exploring Approaches:
- •Propose 2-3 different approaches with trade-offs
- •Use
WebSearchto gather ground truth on relevant technologies, especially for rapidly changing libraries or APIs - •Present options conversationally with your recommendation and reasoning
- •Lead with your recommended option and explain why
Validating Information:
- •Check Sources: Verify the credibility of sources found via web search.
- •Check Recency: Explicitly check the date and time of information. Discard outdated info.
- •Resolve Conflicts: When findings contradict, reason about the conflict based on source authority and recency.
- •No Hallucinations: Do not jump to conclusions without validation. If uncertain, verify with a search or ask the user.
Presenting the Design:
- •Once you believe you understand what you're building, present the design
- •Break it into sections of 200-300 words
- •Ask after each section whether it looks right so far
- •Cover: architecture, components, data flow, error handling, testing
- •Be ready to go back and clarify if something doesn't make sense
Update the Plan:
If you are in plan mode, you MUST use the amplify:write-plan skill update the plan file. If you are NOT in plan mode, do nothing in this step.
Key Principles
- •One question at a time - Don't overwhelm with multiple questions
- •Multiple choice preferred - Easier to answer than open-ended when possible
- •YAGNI ruthlessly - Remove unnecessary features from all designs
- •Ground Truth First - Use web search/fetch to validate facts; do not rely on stale internal knowledge
- •Verify Validity - Check source, date, and time of external info before using it
- •Guardrails - Never present assumptions as facts; validate before concluding
- •Explore alternatives - Always propose 2-3 approaches before settling
- •Incremental validation - Present design in sections, validate each
- •Be flexible - Go back and clarify when something doesn't make sense