Interview me
Let AI ask you the questions. Instead of writing the draft yourself, you answer a short interview and AI assembles the first draft from your answers. Good for a blank page.
Copy this into your AI chat.
Replace the bracketed part with what you are defining, then answer its questions one at a time. It writes the first draft from your answers, and you run that through Sharpen.
Doing this with Claude Code: Interview me
Ask Claude to question you before it builds anything. One question at a time, broad first and then specific, until the gaps are closed. Skip this and it charges ahead on its own guesses and wastes time on the wrong thing. The payoff is bigger than Claude filling in what it needs, because the questions bring up things you had not thought of yourself, so your own thinking comes out more complete. That matters most when the area is new to you, where you do not know what you do not know. The questions raise the things you could never have asked, the ways it can fail, the edge cases, the thing that breaks under load.
The interview works in a few ways: one question at a time, broad then specific and the questions you would not have asked.
One question at a time. It asks, you answer, then the next. A barrage at once and you cannot think, one at a time and each answer shapes the question that follows.
Broad first, then specific. Start wide, who is this dish for, then narrow, any allergies, how much time have you got.
The questions you would not have asked. The real payoff is the things it raises that you did not know to think about, so your own thinking comes out more complete.
No drafting until it has asked. Tell it not to write the card until the questions are done, or it charges ahead on its own guesses.
Part of Ways to get to a sharp answer.