grilling
Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea
Install / Use
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill grillingInstalls into whichever agent you are using.
SKILL.md
Installable skill definition
Quality Score
Category
Development & EngineeringSupported Platforms
Our assessment of grilling
grilling scores 66/100 on our quality scale, 1291st of 1,995 Development & Engineering skills we index.
Its SKILL.md is 1.9 KB long, written without headings with 1 code example: moderately detailed.
With 268,790 GitHub stars, it is one of the more widely adopted skills in the catalogue.
Maintenance, license and trust
- The repository was last updated 2 days ago, so grilling is actively maintained.
- It is released under the MIT license, a permissive license that allows use, modification and commercial use with attribution.
- Its trust signals score 100/100, with no cautions. These come from repository metadata, not a code audit — read the skill file before letting an agent act on it.
Safety scan
No issues foundOur scan of the whole file found no instruction hijacking, hidden characters, credential access, data exfiltration or destructive commands.
Automated pattern scan on 2026-09-26. It catches known dangerous patterns, not every risk — read a skill before letting an agent act on it.
grilling compared with similar skills
All 4 of these similar skills score higher than grilling; compare them before choosing.
| Skill | Score | Stars | Updated | Format |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| grilling (this skill)by mattpocock | 66 | 268.8k | 2d ago | SKILL.md |
| ai-job-searchby MadsLorentzen | 100 | 44.0k | 5d ago | CLAUDE.md |
| claude-howtoby luongnv89 | 100 | 41.7k | today | CLAUDE.md |
| algorithmic-artby anthropics | 100 | 177.9k | 3d ago | SKILL.md |
| pptxby anthropics | 100 | 177.9k | 3d ago | SKILL.md |
Frequently asked questions
- How do I install grilling?
- Run
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill grilling. The install tabs above show the steps for each supported agent. - Which AI agents does grilling work with?
- It is written for Universal, as a SKILL.md file. Other agents that read the same format can often use it too.
- Is grilling safe to use?
- Our scan of the whole file found no instruction hijacking, hidden characters, credential access, data exfiltration or destructive commands. It is MIT-licensed and scores 100/100 on trust signals. Skills are instructions an agent will follow, so read the file before installing it and do not approve commands you do not understand.
- Is grilling still maintained?
- The repository was last updated 2 days ago, so grilling is actively maintained.
Skill content
View source on GitHubname: grilling description: Grill the user relentlessly about a plan, decision, or idea. Use when the user wants to stress-test their thinking, or uses any 'grill' trigger phrases.
Interview the user relentlessly until you reach a shared understanding. Map this as a design tree: every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it.
Work the tree in rounds. The frontier is every decision whose prerequisites are already settled: the questions you can ask now without guessing at answers you haven't heard yet. Ask the whole frontier in one round: number each question and give your recommended answer. Then wait for the user's answers before the next round.
Format a round like so:
❓ **Q1** - **<question title>**: <question body, might be multiple paragraphs, including multiple choices>
➡️ <your recommended answer>
---
❓ **Q2** - **<question title>**: <question body, might be multiple paragraphs, including multiple choices>
➡️ <your recommended answer>
Each round the user answers reshapes the tree: settled decisions push the frontier outward and unblock questions that depended on them. Recompute the frontier and ask the next round. A question whose answer depends on another question still open in this round belongs to a later round, not this one.
Finding facts is your job, never the user's. When a frontier question needs a fact from the environment (filesystem, tools, etc.), dispatch a sub-agent to find it; don't ask the user for anything you could look up yourself. Don't block on it: a running exploration is an unsettled prerequisite, so only the questions downstream of it wait for the sub-agent to report; ask the rest of the frontier now. The decisions are the user's: put each to them and wait.
The session is done when the frontier is empty: every branch of the design tree visited, nothing left silently assumed. Do not act on it until the user confirms you have reached a shared understanding.
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Languages
Trust signals
From repository metadata: license, adoption, age and documentation. Not a code audit — see the Safety scan above for what the skill file itself contains.
