Simplified Claude Code skills for faster work and decision making.
A streamlined version of obra's brainstorming skill, built for speed and short sessions.
Obra's original skill is thorough — it walks through a multi-step discovery process, asks one question at a time, produces a full design document, and commits it to docs/plans/. That's great for large, ambiguous projects where upfront design pays off.
But in practice, I found that for many real-world tasks, the ceremony slowed things down more than it helped. So I built fun-brainstorming — a stripped-down version that keeps the good parts (structured thinking, exploring alternatives, getting approval before coding) and drops the overhead (sequential single-question discovery, mandatory design docs, rigid multi-phase flow).
After testing both skills across multiple sessions, fun-brainstorming consistently outperformed the original for:
- Quick feature additions — Adding a new endpoint, UI component, or config option where the scope is already mostly clear. The original skill's one-question-at-a-time flow added 5-10 extra back-and-forth messages before any real decision was made.
- Bug fix planning — When you already know the bug and need to decide between 2-3 fix strategies. The full brainstorming process felt like overkill when the problem space was already well-understood.
- Short coding sessions (< 30 min) — When you have limited time, spending half of it on structured discovery and design docs leaves little room for actual implementation. Fun-brainstorming gets to a decision in 1-2 messages.
- Refactoring decisions — Choosing between refactoring approaches (extract function vs. inline, rename vs. restructure) where the trade-offs are straightforward and a brief comparison is all you need.
For large greenfield projects, complex architectural decisions, or work that multiple people need to review — the full brainstorming skill with its design docs and thorough discovery process is still the better choice.
Copy the skills/fun-brainstorming directory into your project's .claude/skills/ folder, or reference it directly.