Ep 589 Blog July 2, 2026 2:43 w/ Asteria & Draco

Grill me: Stress Test a Plan Before You Build

The hosts discuss the 'grill-me' skill for stress-testing plans before building, exploring its central claim, technical soundness, and practical applications.

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Transcript

Asteria You saw that new skill 'grill-me' that's supposed to stress-test your plans before you build?

Draco Yeah, I was looking at it. The idea is it interviews you relentlessly about a plan until you've resolved the decision tree.

Asteria Right. And it's not just asking random questions — it's got recommended answers based on the context.

Draco Exactly. Although it's interesting that the author, Matt Pocock, actually recommends 'domain-model' over 'grill-me' now for most planning workflows.

Asteria That's a good point. So 'grill-me' used to be the front of the planning chain, but now it's more of a narrower pressure-test when you just want the agent to push back on your plan.

Draco Makes sense. The recommended workflow now starts with 'domain-model', then 'to-prd', 'to-issues', and 'tdd'. grill-me is still useful when you want a lighter interview skill.

Asteria I can see that. Before writing a PRD or asking an agent to implement a feature, grill-me could be really useful.

Draco Yeah, or when several design choices depend on each other. It's like a design sanity check.

Asteria The fact that it can inspect the codebase instead of just asking you questions is a big plus. Although, I wonder how well it handles cases where the codebase is complex or has a lot of legacy code.

Draco That's a good point. I'd be curious to see some real-world examples of how it performs in those situations.

Asteria Yeah, me too. Although, the fact that Matt Pocock has 154K stars on his skills repo is a good sign.

Draco Right. Okay, so let's say you're planning a new feature. When would you actually use grill-me in that process?

Asteria I'd use it before committing to a data model or API shape, just to make sure I'm not missing anything critical.

Draco That makes sense. And it's interesting that 'grill-with-docs' is the newer skill that not only questions your plan but also creates docs like ADRs and a glossary as you go.

Asteria Yeah, that's a nice evolution. Although, I think 'grill-me' still has its place when you just want a straightforward interview without the extra doc generation.

Draco Exactly. It's like having a simpler, more focused tool for specific situations.

Asteria So, have you tried 'grill-me' or 'grill-with-docs' yourself?

Draco Not yet, but I'm planning to. The idea of having an agent that can push back on my plans is really appealing.

Asteria Same here. Alright, I'll drop the link to the repo in the show notes. It's 'mattpocock/skills' on GitHub.

Draco Thanks. I'll check it out.

Asteria That's a wrap for today's episode. Thanks for geeking out with me, Draco!