clarifying-intent

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• SKILL.md

SKILL.md (first lines)

# Clarifying Intent

This is an internal meta skill. Humans should not need to reference it directly.

## Purpose

Turn a rough request into a clear statement of purpose, constraints, and success criteria before design and planning.

Use this skill when the problem is still fuzzy, the user's real goal is not yet explicit, or the definition of done needs shaping before implementation planning.

## Core Rule

Do not treat implementation as the way to discover intent.

If the user's actual purpose, constraints, or success criteria are still fuzzy, resolve those first, then hand a clearer shape to design and planning.

## Workflow

1. Explore the current context: codebase, patterns, constraints, and adjacent behavior.
2. Clarify the user's real goal and why it matters.
3. Surface the constraints, assumptions, and non-goals that shape the work.
4. Make the success criteria and definition of done explicit.
5. If useful, outline 2-3 plausible approaches with tradeoffs and a recommendation.
6. Hand the clarified intent and success criteria to design and planning.

## When To Use

- vague feature requests
- ambiguous product requests
- architectural choices with unclear goals
- UX work where the desired outcome is still implicit
- any task where success is not yet crisply defined

## Guardrails

- Do not jump to code because the task looks small.
- Do not ask broad speculative questions when the current code already answers them.
- Do not over-explore options when the real gap is just purpose or success criteria.
- If the work is too large for one cycle, clarify the first useful slice and its success criteria.

## Output

Produce a clarified problem statement that is clear enough for downstream design and `writing-plans` work.

The output should make these things explicit:

- goal
- why it matters
- key constraints
- non-goals
- success criteria

From tykowale/darwin, MIT.

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