Discovery Skills

inception-facilitator

The inception-facilitator skill orchestrates multi-phase greenfield product discovery. It guides you through structured exploration before any code is written, ensuring alignment between business goals and technical implementation.

Discovery Phases

1. Idea Exploration — Clarify the problem space, user needs, and success criteria
2. Technical Feasibility — Assess constraints, dependencies, and integration points
3. Team Synthesis — Align stakeholders and establish shared understanding
4. Foundation Setup — Pre-populate agent contexts with discovered knowledge

When to Use

Invocation

# Start inception for a new project
/inception-facilitator

# The skill will guide you through:
# 1. Problem statement clarification
# 2. User persona identification
# 3. Technical landscape analysis
# 4. Risk assessment
# 5. Agent context population

Workflow Diagram

┌─────────────────┐
│  Idea Trigger   │
└────────┬────────┘
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│ Idea Exploration│◄── Domain research, concept validation
└────────┬────────┘
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│   Technical     │◄── Feasibility analysis, constraints
│   Assessment    │
└────────┬────────┘
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│ Team Synthesis  │◄── Stakeholder alignment
└────────┬────────┘
         ▼
┌─────────────────┐
│  Foundation     │◄── Pre-populate agent_docs/
│    Setup        │
└─────────────────┘

brainstorming

The brainstorming skill is your pre-implementation exploration tool. Unlike inception-facilitator (which handles large initiatives), brainstorming is lightweight and designed for quick creative exploration before any coding begins.

What Brainstorming Explores

• User intent clarification
• Requirements refinement
• Design alternatives
• Edge cases and constraints
• Integration considerations

Invocation

# Before implementing a feature
/brainstorming "Add user authentication with OAuth"

# Before modifying existing behavior
/brainstorming "Refactor payment processing for multi-currency"

# Before building a component
/brainstorming "Create data visualization dashboard"

Example Session

You: /brainstorming "Add search functionality to the product catalog"

Fulcrum: Let me explore this with you...

**User Intent:**
- What should be searchable? (name, description, SKU, categories?)
- Real-time search or submit-based?
- Should it support filters alongside text search?

**Requirements to Clarify:**
- Performance expectations (how many products?)
- Fuzzy matching needed?
- Search history/suggestions?

**Design Considerations:**
- Client-side filtering vs. server-side search
- Full-text search (Elasticsearch) vs. database LIKE queries
- Debouncing for real-time search

**Edge Cases:**
- Empty results handling
- Special characters in search terms
- Mobile keyboard optimization

Ready to proceed with implementation?

Discovery vs. Planning

Discovery skills (inception-facilitator, brainstorming) answer what and why. Planning skills (work-triage, writing-plans) answer how and when. Always discover before you plan.

Discovery → Planning → Implementation → Review
    ↑                                        │
    └────────── Feedback Loop ───────────────┘