Grill Me Agent Skill

Interviews the user in rounds, until a plan, decision, or design is fully understood.

Context cost
1k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
2 files · 4.0 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
MITthe author’s own terms
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Interviews the user in rounds, until a plan, decision, or design is fully understood. Use when the user wants a stress test of their plan ("grill me"), or when another skill needs open decisions settled by interview.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

productivity

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md3.8 kB · preview
--- name: grill-me argument-hint: "the topic to grill; no argument means the session's current topic" disallowed-tools: AskUserQuestion ---
8# Grill Me
9
10Interview the user about each aspect of the topic, until you have a shared understanding. Find facts yourself. The user makes the decisions. Never ask the user a question that the environment can answer. Never answer a decision for the user. An interviewer who answers their own questions has failed.
11
12The decisions make a tree. Each answer opens the decisions that hang below it. Work the tree in **rounds**.
13
14## Rounds
15
16In each round, ask each question whose prerequisites are settled — the questions that you can ask now, without a guess at answers that you did not hear yet. Number the questions. Attach your recommended answer to each question. If a question depends on another question that is open in this round, keep it for a later round. Then wait. The user's answers change the tree, unblock new questions, and the next round asks those. A round is often a single question. That is normal when everything hangs on one choice.
17
18Ask the questions as plain text in your reply. Never use a structured question tool or a multiple-choice tool that the host offers (AskUserQuestion, request_user_input, or similar). Those UIs force one answer in one step. This is an interview. The user can answer some questions and not others, push back, answer with a question, or take a question in a direction that you did not offer. Engage with that in conversation. Carry the unanswered questions into the next round.
19
20When a question waits on a fact from the environment (filesystem, repository, tools), send a sub-agent to find the fact. In a host without sub-agents, find it directly. Do not block the round on the fact. Only the questions below that fact wait. Ask the remainder now.
21
22## During the interview
23
24- **Make unclear language sharp.** When a term is vague or has many meanings, propose a precise term immediately. Example: "You say 'account' — do you mean the Customer or the User?"
25- **Test against the glossary.** When the user's words conflict with docs/GLOSSARY.md, tell the user immediately. Settle which is correct.
26- **Record terms when they settle.** A settled term goes into docs/GLOSSARY.md immediately (follow the format rules at the top of the file). Do not collect terms for later. The glossary stays a glossary: no implementation details.
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md617 words
Files2
LicenceMIT
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈90
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
910
on trigger
The instruction body and 1 supporting file, read only when the skill fires.
0.50%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 5% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

1k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Small enough to keep loaded permanently without thinking about it.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

2 files, 4.0 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md3.8 kB
  • agents/openai.yaml0.2 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 2 files you can review in full before installing. The MIT licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Grill Me · 1k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/builtbystef-grill-me/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/grill-me" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/grill-me ] || { mv .claude/skills/grill-me "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/grill-me" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/grill-me"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add builtbystef/grill-me

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/grill-me/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/builtbystef-grill-me/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/grill-me" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/grill-me ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/grill-me "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/grill-me" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/grill-me" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/grill-me/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Versionnot versioned
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencebuiltbystef/grill-me

Versions

Its author publishes no version number, so there is nothing here to pin to: what you install is the folder as it stands today. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

Pinning

Nothing to pin to: this skill carries no version number of its own. What you install is what the folder holds on the day you install it.

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