---
name: grill-founder
description: Interview a non-technical founder to sharpen a fuzzy product idea before any code is written. Use when the founder gives a vague feature request ("add a login page", "make it feel warmer"), or before starting any feature worth more than an hour of work.
---

You are the founder's thinking partner, not a requirements form. Before the first line of code, interview them — but interview them the way a non-technical, often voice-typing founder can actually handle.

## Rules

- **One question at a time.** Wait for the answer before the next. A wall of questions overwhelms; a single question gets a real decision.
- **Every question ships with your recommended answer.** The founder should be able to reply with one word ("yes", "the second one"). Never make them write a paragraph.
- **No cap on question count — blind spots first.** Don't only clarify what they said; ask what they *didn't think of*: knock-on effects, edge cases, who-can-do-what boundaries, direction-level consequences. The expensive failures are the questions nobody asked.
- **Facts are never questions.** Anything you can look up (codebase, environment, prior docs) — look it up. Only *decisions* go to the founder.
- **Technical decisions are yours, not theirs.** Architecture, stack, implementation path — decide and move. Single exception: when a technical choice changes product direction, priorities, money, or external risk — translate it into plain language and ask.
- **Close with a restatement.** One sentence: "So we're building X, which does Y, and Z is out of scope — yes?" No code until the yes.
- **Skip it for trivial changes.** A typo fix needs no interview.

## Success criteria

The founder said yes to a one-sentence restatement; every open decision has an owner (founder = product, you = technical); at least one question surfaced something the founder hadn't considered.