Asking User Questions

Asking User Questions

The workflow family's shared norms for ask_user_question: how to interview in rounds, what makes a question worth asking, how to shape options, and how to degrade when answers don't come. Process skills name this concept at the steps that ask; when to ask — and where the answers get recorded — stays with the referencing skill.

Interview in rounds until nothing is assumed

• Map the subject as a design tree: every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it. The frontier is every open decision whose prerequisites are already settled — the questions you can ask now without guessing at answers you haven't heard.
• One call = one round = the whole frontier, with no cap on its size. A question whose answer depends on another question still open belongs to a later round, never the same one. Never split independent questions across back-to-back calls.
• The call blocks the current run. Answers arrive as this tool's result. Don't keep working on the blocked step or assume an answer until it arrives — seconds or days later. A composer message sent while the card is open supersedes the round: the card closes unanswered and the message arrives as the next user message, so treat it as the user's reply and re-ask only what still matters.
• After each round, recompute the frontier: answers settle branches, unblock their dependents, and prune branches that no longer apply. Ask the next round; never pre-write later rounds.
• The interview is done when the frontier is empty — every branch visited, nothing material silently assumed. Then continue the referencing skill's next step; there is no extra "are we aligned?" round (the referencing skill's own gates still apply).
• Depth follows the work, not a quota: work with no open user decision gets zero rounds; a decision-heavy change may take several.

Facts are yours, decisions are theirs

• Never ask the user for a fact the workspace, the specs, or the web can answer. Look it up. When a lookup is slow, start it in the background (a sub-agent, when the host offers one) and ask the rest of the frontier meanwhile — only the questions downstream of that lookup wait.
• Every decision — scope, observable behavior, trade-offs the user will live with — goes to the user. Picking an option yourself and moving on is answering your own question, not inferring.
• If candidate options differ only internally — identical observable behavior — it is not a user decision: decide yourself and record the reasoning in the workflow's artifact.

What makes a question worth asking

• It changes the outcome. Each answer leads somewhere different that the user will see or live with. If every option ends in the same place, drop the question.
• It is specific to this work. Name the actual feature, screen, file, or user ("when a project is renamed while collapsed…"), never a generic template question.
• It probes what people silently assume. Sweep the tree's usual blind spots: scope edges and non-goals, empty / error / failure states, edge cases and limits, concurrency or multiple instances, existing data and behavior that must migrate or stay, defaults, and who the work is for.
• It surfaces tension. A conflict with a recorded spec decision, an earlier answer, or the request itself is asked about outright, quoting both sides.
• It never re-asks. Anything the request, a prior answer, or the specs already settled is settled; build on it.
• A concrete scenario beats an abstract principle. Ask "a user drags a file onto a busy session — queue it or reject it?", not "how should concurrency be handled?".
• If the question can't be settled by talking (how something should look or feel), show a concrete artifact in options[].preview — a mockup, snippet, or config — instead of describing it.

Options

• Recommended option first, label suffixed "(Recommended)", plus a one-line recommendedReason saying why you recommend it over the alternatives (shown inline under the option as a Why: line).
• Every option: a concise label (1–5 words, ≤ 60 chars) + a description carrying the trade-off or consequence of choosing it. Tailor options to the work at hand — never generic placeholders.
• Options must be decidable by the asked user: frame them as observable behavior or outcomes ("collapsing a project stays collapsed after a rename"), never as implementation mechanics ("semantic guard", "activation ref").
• Never author your own "Other", free-text, or escape options — the tool adds a free-text row to every question and an always-available Skip, and reserved labels are rejected. This holds under multiSelect too: the free-text row stays and is additive — a typed answer arrives alongside the checked options, it does not replace them.
• multiSelect: true when several answers are valid at once (feature checklists); single-select when confirming something or choosing one path.
• options[].preview (markdown) when a concrete artifact — code, a config, a mockup — is clearer shown than described. Single-select only.
• header is a short chip, ≤ 16 characters.

Confirming an inference

When you have inferred something and need a yes/adjust rather than an open answer: the inferred statement is the question text, with "Looks right" as the first option (description: "accurate as written") and a genuine rejection option second (e.g. "Off base — ask me directly"). Edits arrive through the tool's automatic free-text row — do not author an edit option. Read the response as:

• "Looks right" → the inference holds; continue unchanged.
• Free-text tweak (one fact changes) → update that field only; don't re-derive anything else.
• Substantial rewrite → re-derive every inference that came from that statement before continuing.
• Rejection → discard the inference entirely and ask an open-ended question instead.

Degradation

• A skipped or declined question is not a blocker: settle it on your recommended answer, recorded as unconfirmed in the workflow's artifact (the referencing skill says where), and keep working its dependents from that assumption — don't re-ask it.
• A whole round skipped means the user wants to stop being interviewed: ask no further rounds and proceed on recorded assumptions for everything still open.
• If the host reports no interactive UI (ask_user_question returns "not available"), state your assumptions the same way instead of blocking.
• "I don't know / help me understand" is a mis-framing signal, not a missing-knowledge one: re-explain from user-visible behavior in plain language, then re-ask with behavior-framed options — don't repeat the same technical options with more detail.

Red flags

• You stopped after one round while decisions that depended on its answers are still open.
• You chose an option for the user instead of asking — or asked the user something you could have looked up.
• One round holds two questions where one answer would change the other.
• A question restates what the request or an earlier answer already settled.
• Every question would fit any project — nothing names this work's specifics.