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grilling — interview by design tree

Mechanic adapted from Matt Pocock's grilling. Every sentence to the owner follows talk to Arman like a person; filing and delivery follow the ask-arman skill.

1. Build the tree, then prune it (before any question)

Draft privately: every open decision, and the decisions that hang off it. Then DELETE every node that is:

• Settled — a node's DECISIONS.md or "settled — never re-ask" table, or table stakes (stream, persist, resume, never lose input = always yes).
• A fact — dispatch a subagent (lane named). Never ask him anything you can look up.
• Decidable from code, doctrine, or established best practice — decide it, with its companion machinery (decisions are complete). List it under "Decided" so he can override.
• A number that is really a mechanism — bring the mechanism.

What survives is only: vision, product semantics, money, brand, legal, deleting real data, an account only he holds, his eyes on a real screen. The one exception: Arman invoking "grill me" on HIS OWN plan — then challenge his assumptions too, still never ask facts.

2. Rounds

• Frontier = surviving nodes whose prerequisites are settled. A question whose answer depends on another question open this round waits for a later round.
• Round size: per talk to Arman like a person; the rest wait on the Question Desk (ask-arman), ordered by how much of the tree each answer unblocks.
• Never block on exploration. Send the fact-independent frontier now; only questions downstream of a running subagent wait. If he can step away while you explore, say so.
• Number continuously across rounds (round 2 starts at Q5), so "5 yes" is never ambiguous.

3. Question shape — exactly this

Q<n> — <title>. 2–3 plain sentences of background: no doc references, codenames, item IDs, or emojis. Then the question, in one sentence.

• Closed: options only where they differ in approach, never just in magnitude; the best practice in one sentence; Rec: one recommendation + the companion work that makes it true + why.
• Open (vision): ask open, no rec; capture his words verbatim.
• About a flow, surface, or behavior: attach the clickable URL + where to look, OR a mermaid diagram of what actually happens, OR a throwaway prototype (Artifact or demo route) labeled PROTOTYPE. A question he cannot answer from what you gave him is a defect in the question — and often a sign the PATH is broken, which is the real finding.

Every round ends with: Decided (override by number): D1 … · D2 … / Anything you skip ships with my recommendation. / What else should I know that I didn't ask? A question he skipped in an earlier round joins the Decided list as its own numbered item, carrying the recommendation that shipped and the words "default, not ruled" — never written as though he ruled it.

4. After every answer

1. Record it where it belongs, then commit: vision → verbatim in VISION/STATE; ruling → the settled table, dated; creates work → the pending list or owning handoff; kills work → remove it.
2. Recompute the frontier: prune branches the answer killed (say which queued questions died); unblock children; a partial answer gets a follow-up next round — never smoothed over.
3. Skipped = the recommendation ships, recorded as "default, not ruled". "Defer" = a dated explicit deferral. "I need to see it first" = deferral + the URL he needs. "I don't know" / "we have options" = the question failed him: research, then bring it back next round with better facts, best practice, and a rec — never picked silently, never re-asked as-is (decisions are complete).

5. Done

The frontier is empty: every node is answered, decided-with-override-offered, or deferred with a date. Then act — no separate "confirm shared understanding" gate. State the final decisions in ≤10 lines in the same message in which you start the work.

Banned

One question per message · approval after each design section · "see the doc" · menus of numbers · asking whether it should stream/persist/resume · asking a fact · a fork with no recommendation · making him wait for a full audit before round 1 · inventing a question that was not on the pruned tree.

Never invent a question to have one to ask. A candidate that was not on the tree goes through the §1 prune first, like every other node — a decidable best practice spends a slot that belongs to vision. If the frontier comes up empty, say so and ship (§5); an empty frontier is the success condition, not a gap to fill.