A Claude skill that turns Claude into a structured brainstorming partner. Instead of jumping straight to solutions, it walks through understanding your problem, exploring alternatives, and validating ideas incrementally.
This probably already exists, but it was easier to build it than to search for it.
When you say things like "let's brainstorm," "I'm thinking about," or "help me design," this skill guides Claude through four phases:
- Understand — Asks questions one at a time to grasp your actual needs, constraints, and inspirations
- Explore alternatives — Proposes 2-3 genuinely different approaches (including at least one wild card), advocating for each
- Present incrementally — Shares the design in digestible chunks, checking in after each
- Document — Offers to write up the result if it's worth capturing
The key idea: brainstorming rewards patience, not efficiency. The skill encourages dwelling in the problem space rather than racing to a solution.
- Create a new Project (or open an existing one)
- Copy the contents of
SKILL.mdinto the Project's custom instructions - Start a conversation with something like "I'm thinking about..." or "help me design..."
Place SKILL.md in your project's skills directory or reference it from your Claude Code configuration. See the Claude Code skills documentation for details.
Adapted from the brainstorming skill in Superpowers by Jesse Vincent, and then further adapted for Claude Chat by Claude Chat itself.