Grilling
A technique for developing a design concept: the agent interviews the user one decision at a time.
Grilling is a technique for developing a design concept: the agent interviews the user, one decision at a time, asking about the choices that will shape the work rather than about the implementation. The name comes from the uncomfortable questions a good interviewer asks.
The value is that decisions surface while they are cheap. A question about where the boundary sits, or what happens when the input is malformed, costs minutes at the start of a session and hours after the code is written. Grilling moves those questions to the front.
The discipline is one decision at a time. An agent that asks eight questions at once gets vague answers to all of them, because the user is mentally juggling. The interviewer asks, waits, records the answer as a stated constraint, and moves to the next. The output is a set of decisions rather than a document, and the document comes later.
Related terms
Design Concept
The shared understanding of what is being built, held in common between user and agent but separate from any asset.
Prototyping
Having the agent build a quick, rough version when conversation is too low-fidelity and you need a real artefact to talk about.
Spec
A written description of what to build, written before building it.
Context Engineering
Deciding what goes into the model's context, and what stays out.
Human in the Loop
A person who reviews, approves, or corrects the agent's work at key points.
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