Idea-Sourcing Wizard — Shared Shape

A reusable interaction shape for visual-design decisions: ask where the ideas come from before proposing, present the options, render or describe them, and let the speaker pick. Two decision sites use it — the engine/theme decision in phase2-architecture.md and the illustration-style strategy in ../../illustrations/references/strategy.md. This file documents the generic flow once; each site binds its own sources.

The shape generalizes the Pattern-Strategy 4-tier menu (phase2-architecture.md Decision #11) — that menu is the origin; this is the same idea applied to other design choices.

The Flow

1. Source menu first. Present an AskUserQuestion multi-select of idea sources, even when the speaker has history. The checked sources decide which buckets the proposals span.
2. Always-on grounding. The talk's own concepts, audience, and venue ground every proposal — state them above the menu, never as a checkbox.
3. Proposals span the checked sources. Synthesize 3-4 options drawn across the checked sources for variety, each labeled with its source.
4. Pick. A single-select (or a rendered grid, where the decision is visual) chooses the final option. The speaker picks; the agent recommends.

The Source Vocabulary

Each site maps these to its own data. The generic buckets:

• Your Usual — the speaker's most-common choice for this kind of artifact.
• Mode / Series Match — what this talk's mode or series has used before.
• New To You — a fit-relevant option the speaker hasn't used.
• Wild Card — a deliberately provocative option, NOT filtered for fit. Provocation, not prescription.
• What's Trending — a WebSearch-sourced current option; no vault data.
• I'll Drive — the speaker supplies direction + reference examples.

Plus AskUserQuestion's built-in "enter your own".

Quick-Default Fast Path

Offer a menu entry that resolves a sensible default immediately and shows it, deferring deeper refinement — the "ship something now, ask later" path. It is the sanctioned way to go fast: it still produces a concrete, shown result and records its provenance; it never silently commits an unshown choice. For the illustration site this means rendering one default style+model and showing it (it flows through the same render-before-bake gate); for the engine site it means resolving the default engine by precedence and recording engine_source: "quick-default".

Summary-Only / No-Profile Degradation

When the profile (or the relevant history field) is absent, the data-backed sources — Your Usual, Mode/Series Match — have nothing to offer. Present them as "no history yet" or omit them; the fit-based and external sources (New To You, Wild Card, What's Trending, I'll Drive) still work from the talk alone. The quick-default falls back to a hard-coded sensible default. The wizard degrades; any downstream enforcement (e.g. the illustration render-before-bake gate) does not.

One Question Per Turn

Per the interaction-rules steering rule, ask each question individually and wait for the answer before the next. The source menu is one question; the final pick is another.