brainstorming

To create an approved design spec, this skill reviews your project context, asks clarifying questions one at a time, and proposes trade-off options for your approval. It refuses to proceed with implementation until you validate the design and the final written spec.

Analyzing project context for feature design involves reviewing existing project files, documentation, and recent state to ground the new design. This ensures the proposed component design or behavioral change aligns with what is already there.

To present design trade-offs, the skill proposes 2 to 3 approaches, recommends one, and explains why. This structured comparison helps you evaluate architectural constraints and requirements before committing to an implementation-ready design specification.

Yes, this design process applies a hard-gating workflow that forbids implementation actions until the user approves the design sections and the final written spec. This prevents wasted implementation effort on unvalidated designs.

The validated design documentation gets written to docs/superpowers/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md and committed. After saving the design spec, the workflow transitions to implementation planning via writing-plans.

You need a planning gate for component design whenever code must not be written before a validated design exists. This applies to feature building and behavioral changes, ensuring requirements are fully elicited and approved first.