Ce Brainstorm

# Brainstorm Sections

This reference describes what makes a great brainstorm requirements document.
It does NOT prescribe how the doc looks on the page — rendering is handled by
the format-specific references (`markdown-rendering.md`, `html-rendering.md`).

## The outcome

A great brainstorm produces a doc that enables three audiences to act:

- **The planning agent** (`ce-plan` or a human) produces an implementation
  plan without inventing user behavior, scope boundaries, or success
  criteria — the brainstorm answered those.
- **The reviewer** sees the framing choices, distinguishes pinned from open,
  and catches scope gaps before planning.
- **The future reader** traces why the proposed thing matters, who it's for,
  and what success looks like.

Sections earn their place by serving one of these audiences. Omit padding.

## Decide whether a doc is warranted at all

Brainstorm dialogue does not always need to produce a durable document.
Skip document creation when **both** hold:

- The user only needs brief alignment — no exploration produced novel scope,
  framing, or decisions worth preserving in IDed shape.
- Any durable decisions made during the dialogue can flow naturally to
  downstream artifacts (`ce-plan`, the commit message, `docs/solutions/`)
  without a brainstorm doc as an intermediary.

The trigger for creating a doc is when the dialogue surfaced enough
structural decisions, scope boundaries, or acceptance criteria that
downstream consumers (planner, reviewer, future reader) need them in a
durable, IDed form — not just as conversational artifacts.

**Stress test:** a brainstorm about a tiny bug fix where the user asks "fix
this with a null check or with upstream validation?" and the agent confirms
"upstream validation, here's why" doesn't need a brainstorm doc. The
decision flows to `ce-plan` (or directly to commit message, or to
`docs/solutions/` if it's a pattern worth carrying) without a brainstorm
artifact in the middle.

Conversely, a brainstorm about a multi-actor feature with contested scope
and several behavioral conditions probably does need a doc — the planning
agent needs the structured content the dialogue produced.

## Match depth to content

When a doc IS warranted, depth matches what the dialogue produced. A
brainstorm with sparse content produces a sparse doc; one with rich content
produces a rich doc. Don't add ceremony to make a slim brainstorm look
substantial.

## Prose economy

Match-depth-to-content sizes *which* sections appear and how deep each goes.
This sizes *how the kept prose reads*. A section can be material and still be
written loosely — the failure mode is a material section padded into a wall of
text where contradictions hide and a downstream agent loses the thread. Length
that earns its place is fine; wordiness around that length is not.

Hold every kept section to these:

- **One idea per sentence.** A Summary is a handful of sentences, not one
  sentence with five semicolons and four parentheticals. If a sentence needs a
  second parenthetical to stay true, split it.
- **A requirement is one sentence of intent plus at most one qualifier.** When
  a requirement would specify two outcomes ("either A or B, planning decides"),
  state the intent and send the fork to Outstanding Questions — don't write both
  arms in full inside the requirement.
- **Cut hedges and intensifiers.** "Critically", "deliberately", "explicitly",
  "genuinely", "actually", "simply" carry nothing a downstream agent acts on.
- **Prefer the verb to the nominalization.** "Demote the grid", not "the
  demotion of the grid is the deliberate change in this brief".

Precision is not padding: keep domain terms, conditionals, and exact thresholds
verbatim. Economy targets the connective tissue around them, never the precision
itself.

**Resolve in place; don't stratify.** When a later decision answers a parked
question or supersedes earlier text, rewrite or remove the original entry —
don't append a separate "re