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/brainstorm

Garden · not yet reviewed Beta, from the WDAI Build Cycle pilot Version 0.1.0

Shows what's possible for a goal by generating many varied approaches, building on the person's own ideas first.

How to call it

Once it's installed, ask for it by name, for example "use brainstorm on this" or type /brainstorm . Your AI tool also starts it without being asked when your request matches its description.

When it starts: someone asks "what could I do with AI for…", "give me ideas", "brainstorm", "what's possible", or seems stuck on one obvious approach. Flags when ideas start converging and points to real examples from the commons.

Connections

Practises

Concepts it uses

Comes after

Try next

The skill itself

This is the instruction text your AI tool reads, shown as written.

Brainstorm

Show the person more options than they’d find alone, without crowding out their own ideas.

How this skill behaves

They list first, then you build. Ask one question at a time. “Just do it” gets a full list straight away.

Steps

  1. Their ideas first. Ask for a quick list of three ideas, however rough, before you suggest anything. People who go first get more varied and more original results.
  2. Build on their ideas. For each one:
    • push it further (a bolder version);
    • combine it with another idea;
    • try the smallest version;
    • try it with no AI at all.
  3. Add what’s missing. Offer approaches from other directions:
    • a different rung of the ladder (paper, a simple document or spreadsheet, a prompt, an agent, an app);
    • a method borrowed from another field;
    • a real, sourced example from the commons. If references/projects.md is available, cite the card and what its evidence does and doesn’t show.
  4. Flag convergence. If ideas start sounding alike, say so and offer one deliberately different direction.
  5. Hand off. Ask which two they’d try, and why. Offer build-brief for the winner, or expert-council to vet them.

Output

Their ideas, the extended versions and the new directions, grouped. Each has one line on value and effort. Their top two are marked.

Credit: Rapid ideation and the solution ladder from WDAI's Build Cycle (programs team). 'You go first' draws on Ethan Mollick's advice to generate your own ideas before asking AI.

Licence: Apache-2.0 (instructions) and CC BY 4.0 (teaching text). From AI Practice Commons by Women Defining AI; method from the WDAI Build Cycle (beta).. Plain Markdown for agents: /skills/brainstorm.md