brainstorming
The Socratic spec-refinement front of /feature, and the planning front of /sprint. Routed to BEFORE any code — it takes a one-line idea and drives it to an approved, concrete spec with testable acceptance criteria. Five gated phases — frame, shape, refine, write, review-and-approve. No implementation and no handoff to tdd until the spec is on disk and approved; each acceptance criterion becomes one tdd Phase 1 obligation.
npx skills add arbiterForge/codeArbiter --skill brainstorming --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# brainstorming Refine the idea before it touches code. Routed to by `/feature` (before `tdd`) and by `/sprint` (the planning front). ## Pre-flight Read these, or STOP and surface the gap — never guess scope or stack: - `{{PROJECT_DIR}}/.codearbiter/CONTEXT.md` — the `stage:` frontmatter (the maturity value), domain vocabulary, and what the project is NOT building. - `{{PROJECT_DIR}}/.codearbiter/tech-stack.md` — the stack the feature must fit; rule out incompatible designs early. - `{{PROJECT_DIR}}/.codearbiter/open-questions.md` — existing `[CONFIRM-NN]` items; new ones number sequentially from here. Per-feature and light. NOT decompose's whole-project six-layer interview — one feature, five phases. Depth scales with the feature, not the ceremony: a small feature earns a short pass through every phase, never a skipped one. A spec can be five sentences; it cannot be zero — smallness changes the spec's length, not its existence. ## Phase 1 — Frame the problem · gate: BLOCK Take the one-line idea and pin its boundaries before designing or asking anything: - State the problem in one sentence — the concrete pain, not the proposed solution. - Name the user or caller who feels it, and w
- Pre-flight
- Phase 1 — Frame the problem · gate: BLOCK
- Phase 2 — Shape the approach · gate: BLOCK
- Phase 3 — Socratic refinement loop · gate: BLOCK
- Phase 4 — Write the spec · gate: BLOCK
- Phase 5 — Review, approval & handoff · gate: STOP
- Hard rules
What does the brainstorming skill do?
The Socratic spec-refinement front of /feature, and the planning front of /sprint. Routed to BEFORE any code — it takes a one-line idea and drives it to an approved, concrete spec with testable acceptance criteria. Five gated phases — frame, shape, refine, write, review-and-approve. No implementation and no handoff to tdd until the spec is on disk and approved; each acceptance criterion becomes one tdd Phase 1 obligation.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add arbiterForge/codeArbiter --skill brainstorming --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From arbiterForge/codeArbiter, a repository with 138 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.