divergent-design
Route a tradeoff-bearing design decision into the divergent-design workflow (diverge → diagnose → match → decide) instead of open-ended brainstorming. Use this skill the moment a creative task resolves to choosing among competing approaches that carry tradeoffs — building a feature, structuring a module, or selecting a library where more than one option is viable. Trigger phrasings (same surface brainstorming would catch): "which approach", "compare options", "compare approaches", "evaluate alternatives", "weigh alternatives", "X vs Y", "should we use X or Y", "pick between", "choose between", "decide between", "what are the options", "multiple approaches", "design choice", "design decision", "tradeoff", "trade-offs", "pros and cons", "library selection", "tool selection", "architecture". This skill SUPERSEDES open-ended brainstorming whenever the task is a decision among 3+ tradeoff-bearing options: if you can name 3+ viable options that differ on a tradeoff axis, route here for the structured candidate/matrix presentation. Mechanical trigger test: can you name 3+ viable options that differ on a tradeoff axis? Yes → this skill. (If the solution space is genuinely open-ended with no competing options yet, brainstorming still applies.) This is a thin router — it hands off to `workflows/divergent-design.md`, which holds the full process; it does not duplicate it.
Install
npx skillscat add magfrump/claude-workflows/divergent-design Install via the SkillsCat registry.
On bad output, see guides/skill-recovery.md
Divergent Design (router)
Exists so divergent design competes at the skill-selection layer, where open-ended
brainstorming otherwise wins by default on any "creative work." Does not re-implement the
workflow — routes into it.
Trigger test (run this first)
Can you name 3+ viable options that differ on a tradeoff axis?
- Yes → decision, not open-ended ideation. Proceed below.
- No (solution space genuinely open-ended, no competing options yet) →
skill does not apply; open-ended brainstorming does. Stop here.
When the test passes, divergent design supersedes brainstorming even if brainstorming
already auto-fired: the structured candidate/tradeoff/matrix presentation is the point.
Hand off to the workflow
Read and follow workflows/divergent-design.md end to end — it holds the full
process (diverge → diagnose → match → decide), the epistemic and double-diamond variants,
the compact-console output discipline, and the composition rules with RPI, spike, and
systematic-debugging. Do not restate it here; this file is intentionally a stub
(per decision 004, anti-redundancy).
Per that workflow, write the full diverge/diagnose/match prose to docs/working/dd-{topic}.md
(or fold it into the calling RPI research doc when DD runs as a sub-procedure), emit only the
compact per-step console lines, and archive the final decision as docs/decisions/NNN-title.md.
Categories
Install
npx skillscat add magfrump/claude-workflows/divergent-design Install via the SkillsCat registry.