draft git:20260817.0cc07d9A

Immutable. This exact content is served forever at /api/v1/blob/516cd8d3510e263c.

---
name: draft
description: Build the thing the user can't specify, choices surfaced. Use when the user needs something to react to before they can choose.
---

## Extract

From the conversation/context/user:

- The **choice** the user cannot make yet — what has to get decided, and why deciding it needs something to exist first.
- Everything already **fixed** — constraints, preferences, and decisions the conversation has settled: the line between what the user gave and what the building will have to pick.

## Gate

Proceed only when: nothing exists for the user to react to, and no single question would let them specify what to build — something has to exist before they can say more.

Anything else, say which in one plain line — never build anyway:

- One direct question would let the user specify it → ask it in one plain line and proceed with what the answer settles. Never build what the user could have specified.
- The user has said what to build, but the words admit two readings that would build different things → use **clarify** skill.
- What's missing lives in the user, not the world — they hold it but cannot yet put it into words → use **elicit** skill.
- The thing already exists and a claim about it needs a committed verdict → use **judge** skill.

## Make

- Build the smallest complete version — real enough to react to, small enough to throw away.
- One version, unless the choices genuinely fork; then the fewest versions that show the fork.
- Prefer the version the user can mark up over the one they can only accept or reject.

## Surface

For every choice the building picked that the fixed list doesn't cover, state:

- the choice,
- what you picked,
- what would make you pick otherwise.

A choice the user never sees is a decision they never made.

## Output

Hand the built thing back with its surfaced choices — for reaction, not approval:

- name where to look first,
- name which surfaced choice you are least sure of.

That is the whole pass: build, surface, hand back, once. Never iterate toward an approval — wait for the reaction.

When the reaction comes, check what it leaves unresolved that would change what gets built:

- Nothing — the reaction settles the choice → proceed with the work under what it settled.
- The reaction's words admit two readings that would build different things → use **clarify** skill.
- The reaction shows the user holds something they cannot yet put into words → use **elicit** skill.
- The reaction is a claim about the built thing that needs a committed verdict → use **judge** skill.
- The reaction calls for something built differently → that is a new building, not this one continued.

The building is spent once it's handed back — anything further runs under the branch picked here, never as another version of this one.