grill-me
Matt Pocock's agent skill that questions you to clarify plans before coding
Liked as a lightweight skill for up-front planning that questions you to clarify requirements123 and pin down thorough specs before coding.456 The caveats are that it lacks the structure of executable specs7 and that the resulting code can still be hard to follow.8
Why people recommend it
Upfront planning · 3
Helps plan new ideas and projects through question-driven discussion before implementation.
“I have been using https://www.aihero.dev/skills-grill-me with great success.”
“the highest ROI thing I've found is the concept of the grill-me skill”
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“the grill me skill(or its variation) at the design stage”
Clarifying ambiguity · 3
Surfaces ambiguous decisions and gets the agent to ask instead of guessing.
“In general, I find that the grill-me prompt[1] helps with this”
“The grill-me skill is much better for reviewing and clarifying choices”
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“skills like wayfinder and grill-me (they are very helpful still)”
Thorough specs · 2
Helps produce specs that cover edge cases before implementation.
“The grilling (grill-with-docs) skills [1] are amazing for ensuring you produce a through spec that covers all the edge cases.”
“I've recently experimented with more lightweight things like https://github.com/mattpocock/skills which are good.”
Lightweight · 3
A small, simple skill used instead of plan mode or complex spec-driven setups.
“I have been using https://www.aihero.dev/skills-grill-me with great success.”
“The grill-me skill is much better for reviewing and clarifying choices”
Show 1 more
“I've recently experimented with more lightweight things like https://github.com/mattpocock/skills which are good.”
Captures reasoning · 1
The interview approach can preserve a project's reasoning as context.
“Matt Pocock’s “grill-me” skill is a nice example of this idea”
Caveats and dissent
Limited structure · 1
Lacks the structure that executable specifications provide for turning requirements into design.
“skills like wayfinder and grill-me (they are very helpful still)”
Code quality · 1
Even with grill-me and TDD, one user found generated code bloated and hard to follow.
“Two skills I rely on are Matt pococks grill-me and his tdd. These massively helped”
Author skepticism · 1
One commenter criticizes Matt Pocock's prompt-writing approach as having little utility.
“The prose he writes often has very little utility, wrapped up in a ball of wax.”
Default UX · 1
One user forked it to use Claude's ask tool for a nicer, faster experience.
“The grill-me skill is much better for reviewing and clarifying choices”
Often compared with
Threads where it came up
- Ask HN: What does your AI workflow look like? 2 mentions
- An executable specification language based on temporal logic of actions (TLA) 1 mention
- Agents don't need memory, they need documentation 1 mention
- Pi 1.0 1 mention
- Plan mode is dead 1 mention
- AI Coding Agent Skills for Real Engineers 1 mention
Also written as mattpocock/skills, grill-me skill, Matt Pocock Skills. Data: grill-me.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 16
“skills like wayfinder and grill-me (they are very helpful still)”
“I use mattpocock/skills and that generates ADRs (Architectural Decision Records).”
“I basically just install pi-fabric, pi-blackhole, grill-me and that's it.”
“I'll have to check out grill-me.”
“the highest ROI thing I've found is the concept of the grill-me skill”
“The grill-me skill is much better for reviewing and clarifying choices”
“The prose he writes often has very little utility, wrapped up in a ball of wax.”
“Also, a skill like grill-me from Matt P. https://github.com/mattpocock/skills.”
“In general, I find that the grill-me prompt[1] helps with this”
“The grilling (grill-with-docs) skills [1] are amazing for ensuring you produce a through spec that covers all the edge cases.”
“I have been using https://www.aihero.dev/skills-grill-me with great success.”
“I use Opus 4.8 with OMP/Pi coding agent and Matt Pocock Skills installed.”
“Matt Pocock’s “grill-me” skill is a nice example of this idea”
“Two skills I rely on are Matt pococks grill-me and his tdd. These massively helped”
“I've recently experimented with more lightweight things like https://github.com/mattpocock/skills which are good.”
“the grill me skill(or its variation) at the design stage”