clarify-first
An auto pass. It may fire without being asked. That is why the description is narrow.
Status: Validated in-session (negative cases first). Independent run still owed.
This pass started as the X post that started the project. The tweet has the model wait every time. This pass answers under the assumptions and waits only when the next action is hard to undo. A prompt with coffee.
Answering the wrong question well costs more than answering the right question slowly — but only when the work is hard to undo. Both must be true: the request is underspecified, and a wrong direction would cost real time, money, or trust to reverse.
If either condition fails, skip this entirely and just answer. Do not announce the skip.
Use when a request is underspecified and the cost of solving the wrong problem is high. Do not use for well-specified requests, factual questions, routine code changes, or any task where a wrong first attempt is cheap to correct.
Skill file: passes/clarify-first/SKILL.md
Protocol
- Apply the gate. Both underspecified and high undo cost. Otherwise answer normally.
- Name the load-bearing assumptions. At most three. If flipping it doesn't change the answer, it isn't load-bearing.
- Name what's missing — and what it would change.
- Answer anyway. The pre-answer must stay shorter than the answer.
- Close with one question. A second only if it is independent of the first and would change the recommendation on its own. Two is the ceiling, and a compound question joined with "and" counts as two.
Ambiguity alone is not a reason to block. Ambiguity plus irreversibility is.
Two steps here started as preferences and had to become tests. The first validation run fired on "the tests are flaky" — underspecified, but cheap to get wrong — which is why the gate is step 0. A later run on a billing migration had two gaps that were both load-bearing, and a hard cap of one question bought compliance in the worst way: the two got joined with "and" into a single sentence that was harder to answer than either. Transcripts: examples/clarify-first-transcripts.md.