brainstorming

To turn vague ideas into an approved design plan, you need structured brainstorming that enforces iterative clarifying questions, proposes 2-3 architectural alternatives with trade-offs, and requires explicit stakeholder approval before saving a validated design document to the repository.

The best way to compare architecture choices is through a guided design review that presents 2-3 alternative approaches with explicit trade-offs and a recommended path, ensuring stakeholders evaluate constraints and success criteria before committing to an implementation.

To gather requirements without premature coding, use a disciplined exploration process that inspects existing project files and docs, then drives an iterative, one-question-at-a-time dialogue to surface constraints and success criteria before any implementation begins.

Yes, the brainstorming process generates a scaled design document, requests explicit user approval, and saves the validated design to docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md, committing it directly to your repository for future reference.

Yes, you can use this for early-stage product specification and requirements gathering, as it applies directly to early-stage planning, architectural comparisons, and design reviews where stakeholders need to think through solutions before implementation.

You should use iterative one-question-at-a-time dialogue for design reviews because it prevents unexamined assumptions and wasted rework by enforcing a disciplined exploration process that surfaces requirements, constraints, and success criteria before implementation.