domains / families / research / interview-me

interview-me

combined

Extracts what the user actually wants instead of what they think they should want. Achieves this through one-question-at-a-time interview until ~95% confidence about the underlying intent. Use when an ask is underspecified ("build me X" without "for whom" or "why now"), when the user explicitly invokes ("interview me", "grill me", "are we sure?", "stress-test my thinking"), or when you catch yourself silently filling in ambiguous requirements before any plan, spec, or code exists. Interactive interview to formalize a research idea into a structured specification with hypotheses and empirical strategy

When to use

• The ask is missing at least one of: **who** the user is, **why** they want it, what **success** looks like, what the binding **constraint** is
• The request is conventional rather than specific ("build me X", "make it faster") and you can't unpack the convention without guessing
• You're tempted to start with assumptions you haven't surfaced
• The user hasn't said which value they're optimizing for when two reasonable ones are in tension (simplicity vs. flexibility, cost vs. speed)
• The user explicitly invokes: "interview me", "grill me", "before we start, are we sure?", "stress-test my thinking"
• The ask is unambiguous and self-contained ("rename this variable", "fix this typo")
• The user has explicitly asked for speed over verification
• Pure information requests ("how does X work?", "what does this code do?")

When not to use

• Guidance only: does not replace running the project's own linters, type checkers, formatters, or test suites.
• Stop and ask when required inputs, permissions, or scope boundaries are missing.

Skill page

Conflict

The first two copies are the same general-purpose 'interview-me' skill (one is a mirror of the other) that extracts user intent for any underspecified ask. The third copy is a distinct, domain-specific skill that uses a similar one-question-at-a-time interview format but targets formalizing a research idea into a structured empirical specification. Because the third copy contains material steps and a different output artifact that the first two lack, crowning one would hide a real alternative.