grill-me: Stress-Test a Plan Before You Build

Install this skill:

npx skills add mattpocock/skills skill=grill-me -y -g

Source: mattpocock/skills/grill-me

What it does

grill-me interviews you relentlessly about a plan or design until the decision tree is resolved.

It asks one question at a time. For each question, it provides a recommended answer, then waits for feedback before continuing.

If the answer can be found by exploring the codebase, the agent should inspect the code instead of asking you to explain what already exists.

Current recommendation

Matt now generally recommends domain-model over grill-me for planning workflows. Use domain-model as the default starting point when you want to shape a feature against your codebase language, CONTEXT.md, and ADRs.

grill-me is still useful as a narrower pressure-test when you only want a relentless interview about a plan.

When to use it

Use grill-me when you have an idea, plan, architecture, or feature direction that needs questioning, but does not need the full domain-model workflow yet.

Good moments to use it:

• before writing a PRD
• before asking an agent to implement a feature
• before committing to a data model or API shape
• when several design choices depend on each other
• when you want the agent to push back instead of agree

How it fits the workflow

grill-me used to sit at the front of the planning chain, but the recommended workflow now starts with domain-model:

domain-model → to-prd → to-issues → tdd

Use grill-me when you specifically want a lighter interview skill. Use domain-model when the plan should be checked against the language and decisions in the codebase.

Pairs well with

• domain-model, to sharpen the plan against the codebase domain language
• to-prd, to turn resolved context into a PRD
• to-issues, to break the PRD into vertical slices