clarify-intent-and-establish-shared-understanding

From the author

Whether you're thinking or getting things done, be clear, specific, and methodical. Grounded in first principles, rigorously examine and refine a user's plan, task, decision, goal, strategy, proposal, or idea through structured, progressively deeper questioning, in order to bridge the gap between the User and the Agent. Use when the user explicitly requests grilling, challenge, pressure-testing, cross-examination, red-team review, pre-mortem analysis, or a decision audit. The goal is to uncover unclear objectives, hidden assumptions, contradictions, weak evidence, missing information, overlooked constraints, dependencies, risks, trade-offs, failure modes, and misalignment between intended outcomes and likely real-world results. Begin by establishing a shared understanding of the user's actual intent, goals, constraints, and success criteria. Ask focused, high-leverage questions rather than broad or repetitive ones. Adapt each question based on previous answers, probing deeper where uncertainty, unsupported as