Phase 0 Brainstorming Playbook

Turn the user's idea into an agreed .agents-cli-spec.md through a collaborative dialogue — before any sample study, scaffolding, or code. Adapt the depth to the agent's complexity.

HARD-GATE

Do NOT clone a sample, scaffold, run agents-cli create, or write any code until the user has approved the spec. Reading the recipe index is exempt — it is not "studying a sample". Scan it before your first reply and name any matching recipe there, even when that reply is only a clarifying question. This applies even to "obvious" agents — unexamined assumptions cause the most wasted work.

Scale to complexity

Trivial agent — single tool or none, fixed persona, no external auth, no RAG, no multi-agent. → A couple of adaptive questions, a 2–3 sentence spec, one approval. Don't force the full process.
Complex agent — multi-agent / orchestration, RAG, external APIs with auth, or safety-critical. → Full treatment below: adaptive Q&A across all topics, 2–3 approaches, sectioned design with approval per section, self-review, and a user-review gate.

When unsure, start light and escalate as complexity surfaces.

One question at a time

Ask a single question per message; let the answer shape the next. Even two questions in one message is a batch — ask the one that most shapes the design first (usually problem/scope before integrations), and let the answer pick the next.
Ask at least one clarifying question before proposing approaches, and never present a full spec in your first reply. Jumping straight to a finished spec is the most common failure — it skips the dialogue this phase exists for. (Exceptions: a trivial agent, or a genuinely non-interactive run.)
Prefer multiple-choice questions — they are easier to answer than open-ended ones.
Cover the Phase 0 topics (problem, tools/APIs + auth, safety, deployment, plus the context-based ones in SKILL.md), but follow the user's lead rather than a fixed script.
YAGNI: prune features that don't serve the stated purpose.

When you can't ask (non-interactive, sparse, or deferred input)

Asking is always the default. But when you genuinely can't get an answer — a non-interactive run, a one-liner "just build it", or the user defers a choice to you ("whatever's standard", "you pick", "the simplest") — make a concrete choice and list it in the spec under an ## Assumptions heading, each as a one-line decision the user can correct (e.g. "Assumed the public icanhazdadjoke API; no auth"). A deferred or vague answer is an assumption to surface, not a fact to state in the spec body. Always check the axes users most often leave implicit: data sources, auth method, schedule/cadence, and which model.

Non-interactive ≠ skip the thinking. For non-trivial agents you must still record the approaches you weighed and the one you chose, flag oversized scope, and route any capability the scaffold doesn't ship to its recipe (/google-agents-cli-adk-code → references/samples.md) — then commit to a design. The user-review gate is how they catch a wrong assumption.

Propose 2–3 approaches (non-trivial agents)

Once you understand the goal, present 2–3 agent architecture options with trade-offs. End with one explicit recommendation — "I recommend Option X because Y" — before asking the user to choose. Never present a neutral menu and leave the decision unframed; a default-with-reasoning is faster to confirm or override. Typical axes:

Single-agent vs multi-agent / orchestration — one agent with tools, or a coordinator delegating to sub-agents.
Tool / integration choices — which APIs or data sources, and how auth is handled.
Capabilities the scaffold doesn't ship — retrieval ("search / look up over our docs, incidents, tickets, or knowledge base"), sandboxed shell or code execution, memory across sessions, approval gates before risky actions, OAuth consent, safety guardrails, event-driven or scheduled runs. Each is a clone-and-study recipe, never a scaffold flag: look the need up in the topic index in /google-agents-cli-adk-code → references/samples.md and list every matching recipe in the spec's Reference Samples, to study in Phase 1. Don't silently downgrade a stated need to a plain tool call, and flag it even when it's deferred to a later phase.
Deployment shape — prototype-first (recommended) vs a deployment target.

Present the design in sections

For complex agents, present the design in sections and get approval after each — scale each section to its complexity (a sentence if straightforward, a short paragraph if nuanced):

Architecture — single vs multi-agent, sub-agents and their roles.
Tools — each tool's purpose, API, and auth.
Data flow — inputs, retrieval, state/memory.
Safety — concrete guardrails, not generic statements.
Success criteria — measurable outcomes for evaluation.

Be ready to revisit earlier sections when something doesn't fit.

Right-size the scope first

If the request spans multiple sub-systems — 3+ specialist/sub-agents, several integrations, or distinct data/team domains — stop and flag it before designing. Over-scoped agents are the biggest cause of wasted work. Recommend the smallest end-to-end slice that proves the architecture (often one coordinator + one specialist), and defer the rest under a ## Future Phases heading in the spec. This holds even non-interactively: name the full scope, recommend a first slice, defer the remainder — never silently spec the whole thing as one build.

Write the spec

Once the design is agreed, write .agents-cli-spec.md using references/spec-template.md. Write it to the project's working directory (the cwd where the user is building), not a temporary/scratch location — Phase 0 resumes by reading ./.agents-cli-spec.md, so a spec saved elsewhere is lost next session. Name the path in your approval message.

Self-review before showing the user:

Placeholders — any "TBD"/"TODO"/vague requirement? Fill them in.
Consistency — do sections contradict each other? Does the architecture match the tools/use cases?
Scope — 3+ sub-agents/integrations? If so, did you flag it and carve out a first slice, with the rest under ## Future Phases? A spec that builds everything at once is a red flag.
Measurable success criteria — each criterion is a number, threshold, or pass/fail eval, not "works well" / "comprehensive".
Ambiguity — could a requirement be read two ways? Pick one and make it explicit.

Fix issues inline, then continue.

User-review gate

Ask the user to review .agents-cli-spec.md before moving on:

"Spec written to .agents-cli-spec.md. Please review it and tell me if you want changes before we look at reference samples and scaffold."

If they request changes, make them and re-run the self-review. Only once they approve do you proceed to Phase 1 (study samples) → Phase 2 (scaffold).

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