---
title: "grill-me skill: stress-test a plan with an agent interview"
canonical_url: https://cookiesforai.app/skills/mattpocock/grill-me
last_updated: 2026-10-02T01:58:30+02:00
type: skill
summary: "grill-me is Matt Pocock's agent skill that turns your agent into a relentless interviewer, asking numbered rounds of questions about a plan or design until every decision is settled."
install: "npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill grill-me"
related:
  - "https://cookiesforai.app/skills/obra/brainstorming"
  - "https://cookiesforai.app/skills/obra/diagnosing-superpowers"
  - "https://cookiesforai.app/skills/obra/dispatching-parallel-agents"
  - "https://cookiesforai.app/skills/obra/executing-plans"
  - "https://cookiesforai.app/skills/mattpocock/tdd"
---

# Grill me

grill-me is Matt Pocock's agent skill that turns your agent into a relentless interviewer, asking numbered rounds of questions about a plan or design until every decision is settled.

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Matt Pocock |
| Source | https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/HEAD/skills/productivity/grill-me |
| License | MIT |
| Repository stars | 273,901 on 2026-10-02 |
| Skill name | grill-me |
| Category | Planning and agent workflow |
| Skill last changed | 2026-08-15 |
| Page updated | 2026-10-02 |
| Facts checked | 2026-10-02 |

## Install

Install the skill with the skills CLI:

```
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill grill-me
```

Also install grilling, which holds the interview steps grill-me hands off to:

```
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill grilling
```

Or, in Claude Code, install the whole collection from the official marketplace:

```
/plugin install mattpocock-skills
```

## Ask your coding agent

A skill can include scripts that run on your computer, so read its source first: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/HEAD/skills/productivity/grill-me

```text
Install the agent skill grill-me from github.com/mattpocock/skills.
```

## What it does

Grill me is a skill in Matt Pocock's collection, which his README calls his most popular, for aligning with an agent before any work starts. You call it by name, for example /grill-me, and describe a plan, decision or idea. The agent then interviews you instead of building, so gaps in the plan show up as questions rather than as wrong code later.

The interview logic lives in the companion grilling skill. The agent maps your plan as a tree of decisions, where each choice opens the choices that depend on it. Each round it asks every question it can already ask, numbered, with its own recommended answer under each one, then waits for your replies before recomputing the next round.

Facts are the agent's job and decisions are yours. When a question needs a fact from the project, the agent looks it up, for example with a sub-agent, instead of asking you. The session ends only when no open branch is left, and the agent does not act until you confirm you share the same understanding.

## When to use it

- You have a feature idea and want the agent to find the holes before it writes code.
- You are about to make a decision and want it questioned from every side.
- Your agent keeps building something other than what you meant.
- You want a written list of decisions, each with a recommended answer you can accept or change.

## When to pick something else

- Code changes where the plan should also be checked against project docs: the author points to grill-with-docs in the same repository.

## Which agents it works in

Matt Pocock documents it for Claude Code, Codex, Any agent that reads SKILL.md files, through the skills CLI. The open skills CLI also installs it into 78 agents (listed with the CLI on 2026-10-01).

grill-me is a one-line entry point that only runs when you call it, then hands off to a second skill named grilling. It phrases that hand-off as a call to the Skill tool, so agents without one need grilling installed beside it and may need to be pointed at it.

## License

MIT.

## Related

### Related skills for planning and agent workflow

- [Brainstorming](https://cookiesforai.app/skills/obra/brainstorming): Brainstorming is an agent skill from Superpowers that makes your coding agent work out what you want and agree a design with you before it writes any code.
- [Diagnosing Superpowers](https://cookiesforai.app/skills/obra/diagnosing-superpowers): Diagnosing Superpowers is an agent skill from Superpowers that reads a session's transcripts when work went wrong and reports what happened, with every finding tied to a file and line.
- [Dispatching Parallel Agents](https://cookiesforai.app/skills/obra/dispatching-parallel-agents): Dispatching Parallel Agents is an agent skill from Superpowers: when several problems are independent, your agent sends a focused subagent to each at once, then checks the results together.
- [Executing Plans](https://cookiesforai.app/skills/obra/executing-plans): Executing Plans is an agent skill from Superpowers in which your agent works through a written plan itself, task by task with tests, then gets one fresh review of the whole branch.

### More from Matt Pocock

- [TDD](https://cookiesforai.app/skills/mattpocock/tdd): tdd is Matt Pocock's agent skill for test-driven development: the agent agrees which public interfaces to test with you, then works one failing test and one minimal fix at a time.