brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

1.17x

Quality

54%

Does it follow best practices?

Impact

74%

1.17x

Average score across 3 eval scenarios

Securityby

Passed

No known issues

Optimize this skill with Tessl

npx tessl skill review --optimize ./skills/brainstorming/SKILL.md

Quality

Content

77%

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

This is a well-crafted process skill with excellent workflow clarity, strong validation gates, and highly actionable guidance. Its main weakness is moderate verbosity — several sections explain design principles Claude already knows (isolation, YAGNI, following existing patterns) rather than focusing purely on the novel process constraints. The progressive disclosure is adequate but the skill is somewhat monolithic for its length.

Suggestions

Trim the 'Design for isolation and clarity' and 'Working in existing codebases' sections to 1-2 sentences each — these are general software design principles Claude already knows well.

Consider extracting the Visual Companion section into the referenced visual-companion.md file and keeping only a brief summary with a pointer in the main skill.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The skill is reasonably well-structured but includes some verbose sections that could be tightened. The anti-pattern section, the detailed 'Design for isolation and clarity' section, and the 'Working in existing codebases' section explain concepts Claude already understands well. The visual companion section is thorough but could be more concise.	2 / 3
Actionability	The skill provides highly concrete, actionable guidance: a numbered checklist, specific file paths for design docs (docs/superpowers/specs/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>-design.md), exact message templates for user prompts, clear decision criteria for visual vs terminal, and explicit transition rules. Every step tells Claude exactly what to do.	3 / 3
Workflow Clarity	The workflow is exceptionally clear with a numbered checklist, a graphviz process flow diagram, explicit validation gates (user approval after each design section, spec self-review with 4-point checklist, user review gate before proceeding), and feedback loops (revise design if not approved, re-run spec review if changes requested). The hard gate preventing premature implementation is a strong safety checkpoint.	3 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	The skill references one external file (skills/brainstorming/visual-companion.md) and mentions other skills (writing-plans, elements-of-style:writing-clearly-and-concisely), which is good. However, the main file is quite long (~180 lines of content) and some sections like 'Design for isolation and clarity' and 'Working in existing codebases' could potentially be split out. No bundle files were provided to verify the referenced visual-companion.md exists.	2 / 3
	Total	10 / 12 Passed

Description

32%

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

This description is too broad and vague to effectively differentiate itself from other skills. It reads more like a process mandate ('You MUST use this') than a clear capability description, and the actions it claims to perform ('explores user intent, requirements and design') are abstract. The overly wide trigger scope means it would conflict with many other skills in a multi-skill environment.

Suggestions

Replace vague capability language with specific concrete actions, e.g., 'Conducts structured requirements gathering through clarifying questions, generates design documents, and produces acceptance criteria before implementation begins.'

Narrow the trigger scope significantly - instead of 'any creative work', specify the types of tasks or project phases where this skill adds unique value, e.g., 'Use when starting a new feature, when requirements are ambiguous, or when the user asks for help planning or scoping work.'

Rewrite in third person voice ('Explores user intent' is acceptable, but 'You MUST use this' should be removed or rephrased) and add distinctive terminology that separates this from general coding skills, such as 'requirements elicitation', 'design exploration', or 'scope definition'.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	The description uses vague language like 'creative work', 'creating features', 'building components', 'adding functionality', and 'modifying behavior' without specifying concrete actions the skill performs. 'Explores user intent, requirements and design' is abstract and doesn't list specific capabilities.	1 / 3
Completeness	The 'when' is addressed ('before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior') and the 'what' is loosely stated ('Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation'). However, the 'what' is vague and the 'when' is overly broad, making it a weak but present answer to both questions.	2 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	Terms like 'creating features', 'building components', 'adding functionality', and 'modifying behavior' are somewhat relevant keywords users might use, but they are extremely broad and could apply to almost any development task. Missing more specific natural language triggers.	2 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	This description is extremely generic and would conflict with virtually any development, design, or planning skill. Terms like 'creating features', 'building components', and 'modifying behavior' overlap with nearly every coding or development skill.	1 / 3
	Total	6 / 12 Passed

Validation

100%

Warnings & errors only

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation — 11 / 11 Passed

Validation for skill structure

No warnings or errors.

Repository: obra/superpowers
Commit: 6fd4507

Reviewed: 15 days ago

Table of Contents

Discovery Implementation Validation

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