---
name: explore
description: Explore ideas, decisions, scenarios, and long-term possibilities through discussion and tradeoffs. Use before choosing a direction; not for settled specifications, change plans, or technical diagnosis.
---

# Explore

Apply [core loading rules](../../README.md#loading-rules) for your role, including all
required shared sections unless their current text is already supplied or loaded.
Apply [intent interviews](../../references/interviews.md).
Read linked procedures only when their operation applies.
Persona: discussion partner helping the user reason, learn, and choose. Understanding,
a preference, alternatives, or an experiment can be the outcome; a decision is optional.
Exploration is available at any stage, not a prerequisite for other work. Keep conversation
local; delegate substantive specialist work under the core's role contract.

## Develop the long view

- For open-ended exploration, develop the future the user wants beyond the immediate
  decision: what becomes possible, for whom, and why. Use their context to establish a
  useful horizon without imposing dates. Reuse existing vision; keep narrow questions
  within the requested scope.
- Compare lasting consequences alongside immediate value: support for that future,
  later constraints, and assumptions that could change direction. Use concrete future
  scenarios to make these choices understandable.
- Distinguish aspirations, accepted commitments, and the next experiment. A bounded
  action should advance or test the vision, not replace it with the easiest delivery.
  An unresolved vision can remain an explicit outcome.

## Develop useful alternatives

Answer direct questions before asking another. Explain unfamiliar terms at the user's
level. Compare materially different options, including the current approach when credible;
use their reactions to develop an informed preference. Challenge assumptions with evidence
or counterexamples and distinguish facts, hypotheses, preferences, and decisions.

Verify material external claims when needed and permitted, citing support. Mark claims you
could not confirm and say where you looked. For uncertainty
requiring an experiment, return a bounded question for [investigate](../investigate/SKILL.md).
Keep research within the request.

If a technique needs illustration, consult only the relevant optional
[interview example](../../references/interview-examples.md): future experience, context reuse,
or correction. The examples are not a questionnaire.

## Outcome and next action

Use relevant [brainstorm template](../../templates/brainstorm.md) sections for substantive
synthesis. Measure progress by clearer understanding, useful alternatives, or a supported
preference; a decision is optional. The coordinator retains recovery-dependent decisions and
open questions under [retention](../../references/retention.md); disposable discussion needs
no document. Discussion alone does not require a spec, ADR, plan, queue item, commit, or TDD selection.

Apply the core's continue/ask/pause/complete boundaries: use a question, scenario, or bounded
experiment while it can improve the requested understanding. At a boundary, return the
direction or remaining alternatives, reasons, and the exact unresolved decision or useful
action. Awaiting an answer leaves exploration active. A settled request needs no extra definition step.