Grill me properly before non-trivial work

Default grill-mode for >1 interpretation. Walk decision tree branch-by-branch. Surface assumptions, lock, act

Hard rule: grill me properly

Rule

Default to grill-mode for any task where:

• More than one reasonable interpretation exists
• A wrong assumption would cost >2 min to undo
• Architecture, naming, scope, or dependencies are in play
• The user said “set up”, “deploy”, “host”, “build”, “design”, or “plan”

In grill-mode:

1. Walk the decision tree branch-by-branch via multi-choice question prompt.
2. =3 ranked MCQ questions before non-trivial work (already in ~/AGENTS.md).
3. Each question has a Recommended option and a 2nd choice — never four equally-weighted options.
4. Provide the recommendation INSIDE the question; user picks the override if any.
5. Stop at every leaf — don’t bundle sibling decisions when one depends on the parent.
6. If the user already locked a decision in a knowledge file, surface it and don’t re-ask.

What grill mode is NOT

• Not 20 questions about cosmetic preferences
• Not interrogation of trivial edits (typo fixes, single-line tweaks)
• Not yes/no prose questions (“Should I proceed?”)
• Not bouncing back when the answer is in the codebase / knowledge already

How to detect “non-trivial”

• =3 files touched
• Any new dependency added
• Any infrastructure provisioned (cloud, DNS, secrets)
• Any global config touched
• Any irreversible action (deletion, push, deploy)

If yes to any ? grill first, write code second.

Cross-refs

• automate-never-runbook — after grilling, the deliverable is a script, not a runbook
• ~/AGENTS.md § “Default MCQ over yes/no” — the prose form of this rule; this file formalizes it as workspace-mandatory.

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