Brainstorm

Overview

Brainstorming expands possibilities before narrowing them down. Unlike planning (HOW) or deep-interview (WHAT exactly), brainstorming explores the WHAT IF space.

Core principle: Diverge fully before converging. Never judge during idea generation.

Delegates to: OMC architect agents (multi-lens ideation), analyst agent (clustering), critic agent (evaluation)

The Iron Law

NO JUDGMENT DURING DIVERGENT PHASE. NO SELECTION WITHOUT EVALUATION.

If you haven't completed Phase 1 (Diverge), you cannot evaluate or select ideas. If you haven't completed Phase 3 (Evaluate), you cannot recommend an idea.

When to Use

• Direction is unclear — don't know what approach to take
• Exploring possibilities for a new feature, architecture, or tool
• Stuck on a problem and need fresh perspectives
• Multiple valid approaches exist and need structured comparison
• User says "brainstorm", "아이디어", "what if", "explore options"

Use this ESPECIALLY when:

• "Just go with the obvious approach" feels tempting
• Only one option seems to exist (usually means insufficient exploration)
• The problem domain is unfamiliar

The Diamond Model

Phase 1: DIVERGE              Phase 2-3: CONVERGE
   ╱  ideas expand    ╲           ╱  evaluate  ╲
  ╱   no judgment      ╲         ╱   rank       ╲
 ╱    quantity first    ╲       ╱    select      ╲
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        open wide              narrow to best

Process

Phase 0: Context Gathering (Automatic)

Before any ideation, gather relevant context silently:

1. Run explore agent (haiku): scan codebase for related patterns, constraints, prior art
2. Identify technology stack, existing conventions, and hard constraints
3. If user provided a topic, search for similar solved problems in the codebase

Rule: Gather codebase facts BEFORE generating ideas. Ideas grounded in reality are better than ideas from vacuum.

Phase 1: Diverge — "Yes, And"

Generate as many ideas as possible. NO judgment. NO filtering. NO evaluation.

Multi-Lens Technique (run 3-5 architect agents in parallel):

Each lens generates 3-5 ideas → 15-25 candidates total.

Rules during Phase 1:

• Every idea is valid (no "that won't work")
• Build on others' ideas ("yes, and...")
• Wild ideas welcome (they often seed practical solutions)
• Quantity over quality at this stage

Phase 2: Cluster & Enrich

1. Group similar ideas into clusters (3-7 clusters typical)
2. Name each cluster with a clear theme
3. Identify combinable ideas across clusters (SCAMPER: Combine)
4. Fill gaps: "What perspective is missing?"
5. Synthesize hybrid ideas from promising combinations

Phase 3: Evaluate & Rank

Score each candidate on a 4-axis matrix:

Scoring: 1-5 per axis → weighted average → rank.

Delegate evaluation to OMC critic agent (opus) for rigorous, unbiased scoring.

Phase 4: Output

Present results in structured format:

## Brainstorm Results: {topic}

### Context
{codebase findings, constraints identified in Phase 0}

### Top Ideas (ranked)
1. **[Idea Name]** — Score: X.X/5
   - What: one-sentence description
   - Why it scores high: key strengths
   - Sketch: rough implementation approach
   - Risk: main concern

2. ...

### Honorable Mentions
- Ideas that scored well but narrowly missed top ranks

### Discarded (with reasons)
- Ideas that were evaluated and rejected, with brief rationale

### Recommended Next Step

Phase 5: Execution Bridge

After presenting results, offer next steps:

1. Deep Interview → Clarify requirements for the top idea
2. Plan → Create implementation plan for a selected idea
3. Refine → Run another brainstorm round with narrower scope
4. Compare → Deep-dive trade-off analysis of top 2-3 ideas

Modes

OMC Agent Delegation

Rationalization Prevention

Red Flags — STOP

If you catch yourself:

• Dismissing ideas during Phase 1 ("that won't work")
• Jumping to implementation before completing evaluation
• Evaluating only 1-2 ideas instead of the full set
• Skipping lenses because "we already have enough ideas"
• Selecting an idea without scoring it against the matrix
• Combining Phase 1 and Phase 3 (generating and judging simultaneously)

ALL of these mean: STOP. Return to the current phase's rules.

Integration

Pipeline position:

[brainstorm] → [deep-interview] → [plan] → [autopilot/ralph]
  WHAT IF       WHAT exactly       HOW        DO

Previous step: None (entry point for open-ended exploration) Next step: deep-interview (for requirements clarification) or omc-plan (if requirements are already clear)

OMC delegation:

• architect agents: multi-lens ideation (Phase 1)
• analyst agent: clustering and synthesis (Phase 2)
• critic agent: quantified evaluation (Phase 3)
• explore agent: codebase context (Phase 0)