Now liveThe Skillselion MCP - thousands of ranked skills, loaded into your agent mid-task. No install.Get it →
mattpocock avatar

Grill With Docs

  • 577k installs
  • 192k repo stars
  • Updated July 27, 2026
  • mattpocock/skills

grill-with-docs is a Claude Code skill that sharpens a plan through a relentless grilling interview while writing resolved terminology to a CONTEXT.md glossary and hard decisions to ADRs as it goes.

About

grill-with-docs runs a relentless interview (a /grilling session) to sharpen a plan or design, and leaves a paper trail as it goes: it drives the /domain-modeling skill so resolved terminology lands in CONTEXT.md and hard-to-reverse decisions become ADRs. It is the stateful variant of the repo's grilling primitive, meant for when you have a codebase whose documented language the plan should be tested against; /grill-me is the stateless alternative when no repo exists. In the repo's main idea-to-ship flow it is the recommended starting point, before spec and ticket writing. Reach for it to stress-test an idea against your project's existing vocabulary and documented decisions while keeping those docs current.

  • Runs the repo's /grilling interview primitive against your plan or design
  • Drives the /domain-modeling skill so resolved terminology lands in CONTEXT.md and hard decisions become ADRs
  • Stateful counterpart to /grill-me: it retains what it learns in the repo's docs, leaving a paper trail
  • Recommended first step of the repo's idea-to-ship flow when a codebase exists

Grill With Docs by the numbers

  • 576,514 all-time installs (skills.sh)
  • Security screen: LOW risk (skills.sh audit)
  • Data as of Jul 28, 2026 (Skillselion catalog sync)
At a glance

grill-with-docs capabilities & compatibility

Capabilities
plan review · glossary maintenance · adr authoring · requirements interview
Use cases
planning · documentation
Runs
Runs locally
Pricing
Free
From the docs

What grill-with-docs says it does

Interview me relentlessly about every aspect of this plan until we reach a shared understanding.
SKILL.md
Only offer to create an ADR when all three are true:
SKILL.md
npx skills add https://github.com/mattpocock/skills --skill grill-with-docs

Add your badge

Show developers this skill is listed on Skillselion. Paste this into your README.

Listed on Skillselion
Installs577k
repo stars192k
Security audit3 / 3 scanners passed
Last updatedJuly 27, 2026
Repositorymattpocock/skills

How do I pressure-test a plan against my codebase's documented language and keep the glossary and decision records current while deciding?

Sharpen a plan or design through a relentless grilling interview that writes resolved terminology to CONTEXT.md and hard decisions to ADRs as it goes.

Who is it for?

Developers with an existing codebase who want a plan interrogated and the resulting terminology and decisions documented as they crystallise.

Skip if: Skip when there is no codebase to persist docs into; the repo's stateless grill-me variant covers that case.

When should I use this skill?

You have a codebase and a plan or design to sharpen, and want the interview's resolved terms and decisions captured in CONTEXT.md and ADRs as you go.

What you get

A sharpened plan plus updated CONTEXT.md glossary entries and ADRs recording the decisions made during the interview.

  • CONTEXT.md glossary updates
  • ADR files

By the numbers

  • ADR offered only when all 3 conditions are true

Files

SKILL.mdMarkdownGitHub ↗

<what-to-do>

Interview me relentlessly about every aspect of this plan until we reach a shared understanding. Walk down each branch of the design tree, resolving dependencies between decisions one-by-one. For each question, provide your recommended answer.

Ask the questions one at a time, waiting for feedback on each question before continuing.

If a question can be answered by exploring the codebase, explore the codebase instead.

</what-to-do>

<supporting-info>

Domain awareness

During codebase exploration, also look for existing documentation:

File structure

Most repos have a single context:

/
├── CONTEXT.md
├── docs/
│   └── adr/
│       ├── 0001-event-sourced-orders.md
│       └── 0002-postgres-for-write-model.md
└── src/

If a CONTEXT-MAP.md exists at the root, the repo has multiple contexts. The map points to where each one lives:

/
├── CONTEXT-MAP.md
├── docs/
│   └── adr/                          ← system-wide decisions
├── src/
│   ├── ordering/
│   │   ├── CONTEXT.md
│   │   └── docs/adr/                 ← context-specific decisions
│   └── billing/
│       ├── CONTEXT.md
│       └── docs/adr/

Create files lazily — only when you have something to write. If no CONTEXT.md exists, create one when the first term is resolved. If no docs/adr/ exists, create it when the first ADR is needed.

During the session

Challenge against the glossary

When the user uses a term that conflicts with the existing language in CONTEXT.md, call it out immediately. "Your glossary defines 'cancellation' as X, but you seem to mean Y — which is it?"

Sharpen fuzzy language

When the user uses vague or overloaded terms, propose a precise canonical term. "You're saying 'account' — do you mean the Customer or the User? Those are different things."

Discuss concrete scenarios

When domain relationships are being discussed, stress-test them with specific scenarios. Invent scenarios that probe edge cases and force the user to be precise about the boundaries between concepts.

Cross-reference with code

When the user states how something works, check whether the code agrees. If you find a contradiction, surface it: "Your code cancels entire Orders, but you just said partial cancellation is possible — which is right?"

Update CONTEXT.md inline

When a term is resolved, update CONTEXT.md right there. Don't batch these up — capture them as they happen. Use the format in CONTEXT-FORMAT.md.

CONTEXT.md should be totally devoid of implementation details. Do not treat CONTEXT.md as a spec, a scratch pad, or a repository for implementation decisions. It is a glossary and nothing else.

Offer ADRs sparingly

Only offer to create an ADR when all three are true:

1. Hard to reverse — the cost of changing your mind later is meaningful 2. Surprising without context — a future reader will wonder "why did they do it this way?" 3. The result of a real trade-off — there were genuine alternatives and you picked one for specific reasons

If any of the three is missing, skip the ADR. Use the format in ADR-FORMAT.md.

</supporting-info>

CONTEXT.md Format

Structure

# {Context Name}

{One or two sentence description of what this context is and why it exists.}

## Language

**Order**:
{A one or two sentence description of the term}
_Avoid_: Purchase, transaction

**Invoice**:
A request for payment sent to a customer after delivery.
_Avoid_: Bill, payment request

**Customer**:
A person or organization that places orders.
_Avoid_: Client, buyer, account

Rules

  • Be opinionated. When multiple words exist fo

Related skills

How it compares

Use instead of ad-hoc chat planning; the interview is stateful and leaves ADRs and a glossary behind rather than losing decisions to chat history.

FAQ

What does grill-with-docs do?

It runs a relentless grilling interview to sharpen a plan or design, driving the domain-modeling skill so resolved terms land in CONTEXT.md and hard-to-reverse decisions become ADRs.

How is grill-with-docs different from grill-me?

Both run the same grilling primitive. grill-with-docs is stateful and assumes a codebase: it leaves a paper trail in CONTEXT.md and ADRs. grill-me is stateless and saves nothing locally.

Where does it fit in the repo's main flow?

It is step one of the idea-to-ship flow: sharpen the idea first, then move to to-spec and to-tickets for multi-session builds, or straight to implement for small ones.

Is Grill With Docs safe to install?

skills.sh reports 3 of 3 security scanners passed. Review the Security Audits panel on this page before installing in production.

This week in AI coding

Five minutes, every Monday - the tools, releases and tactics for developers.

unsubscribe anytime.