[AI Skill: /grill-me] Interactive Requirements Scoping: How to Use /grill-me for AI Tasks

Summary (Too Long; Didn't Read / TL;DR): The /grill-me skill, created by Matt Pocock, is designed to turn your Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant into an inquisitive management consultant who interviews you before executing complex tasks. By surfacing hidden assumptions early, it is designed to help reduce bad first drafts, repetitive revision loops, and wasted effort.

The office pain point: why you get bad first drafts

Have you ever given your Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant a prompt like "Draft a marketing strategy for our new product" or "Write a project launch plan," only to receive a result that feels generic, bland, or completely off-target?

When this happens, the instinct is to blame the AI. The root cause is underspecified intent.

When a human manager assigns a high-level task to a junior colleague without providing details on the target audience, budget, positioning, tone, or key milestones, the colleague is forced to guess. An AI assistant does the same thing. When given a vague instruction, it fills in the blanks with generic assumptions.

Getting a bad first draft leads to a painful cycle:

• You write a quick prompt expecting a polished draft.
• The AI generates a multi-page document that misses your core business goal.
• You spend significant time prompting back and forth, trying to fix individual paragraphs.
• You end up rewriting much of the document yourself.

Imagine if, before writing a single word of your deliverable, your AI assistant stopped you and said: "Before I start, I need to ask you a few questions about your target audience, success metrics, and key constraints."

That is what the /grill-me skill is designed to do. It is intended to shift your AI from a passive typist into a more proactive strategic partner.

What is `/grill-me`? (The management consultant metaphor)

/grill-me is a productivity skill created by Matt Pocock, a developer and educator known for building practical AI workflow tools. At ARUO, we curate and introduce skills like this one because they solve real business problems without requiring technical expertise to use.

To understand how it works, imagine working with an elite management consultant or senior project director.

When you hire an executive consultant to draft a corporate growth strategy, they do not run off into a back room and start typing immediately. Instead, they sit down across from you with a notebook, ask pointed questions, probe your assumptions, and resolve dependencies one by one until both of you share a clear, mutual understanding of the objective.

How `/grill-me` shifts agent behavior

Without /grill-me, an AI agent operates in Output Mode: it attempts to complete your task in a single turn using whatever minimal information you provided.

With /grill-me, the agent is designed to switch into Interview Mode. It is intended to pause execution and present you with targeted questions, each with a recommended answer, before drafting anything. As you respond, the agent is designed to work through the decision tree in sequence, so early decisions (such as target audience) can shape later ones (such as key messaging). Only after the key questions are resolved is it designed to draft the final deliverable for your approval.

Real office use cases by role

Four common scenarios show how different office roles can use /grill-me:

Product managers and project managers

Scoping a new feature release or project charter. Without /grill-me, you ask AI for a Product Requirements Document (PRD) and receive generic user stories that ignore your team's actual constraints and bandwidth. With /grill-me, the AI is designed to interview you on release targets, user personas, non-negotiable features, and success metrics, then produce a structured PRD matched to your team's reality.

Marketing and content teams

Planning a multi-channel quarterly marketing campaign. Without /grill-me, you ask AI for a content calendar and get a list of repetitive social media post ideas with no cohesive strategy. With /grill-me, the AI is designed to ask you about campaign objectives, core customer pain points, tone of voice, budget allocation, and target conversion channels, then produce a channel-by-channel blueprint aligned with your plan.

Business development and sales

Drafting a client proposal or partnership pitch deck. Without /grill-me, the output reads like a standard corporate brochure with no customization for the prospect's situation. With /grill-me, the AI is designed to ask you about the prospect's industry background, key stakeholders, budget expectations, competitive threats, and deal breakers, to produce a more tailored proposal.

Strategy and operations

Preparing an executive briefing or restructuring proposal. Without /grill-me, the draft contains surface-level recommendations that miss operational bottlenecks and resource constraints. With /grill-me, the AI is designed to probe your assumptions on risk tolerance, timeline, and reporting structure, to produce a structured memo ready for senior review.

Step-by-step how-to guide

Once the /grill-me skill is installed in your AI tool, using it takes no additional configuration.

When to trigger

Invoke /grill-me at the very beginning of any medium-to-large office deliverable, including:

• Writing project plans, briefs, or proposals
• Designing strategic campaigns or roadmaps
• Drafting important executive memos or policy documents
• Outlining complex presentations or reports

How to invoke

In your AI chat window, type /grill-me at the start of your task prompt:

Example Prompt:

/grill-me I want to create a comprehensive customer onboarding strategy for our enterprise software service.

Typing /grill-me is designed to trigger the skill automatically, once installed. This is a custom skill that requires a one-time installation by you or your team administrator.

What to expect during the interview

The skill is designed to present a focused set of numbered questions per round, each with a recommended answer marked (Recommended). You review the questions, select or adjust the answers, and send them back. The agent is designed to advance to the next round of questions based on your responses, continuing until all key requirements are resolved.

Completing the scoping session

Once all key questions are answered, the AI is designed to summarize your shared alignment into a structured project plan or master specification. After you give final approval, it can generate the polished deliverable in a single pass.

Copy-paste prompt template

English prompt template

/grill-me

I need to draft a [NAME OF DELIVERABLE, e.g. Quarterly Marketing Plan / Product Requirements Document (PRD) / Executive Sales Proposal].

Target Goal: [Brief 1-sentence statement of what you want to achieve]

Target Audience: [Who is this deliverable for? e.g. Executive Board / Enterprise Clients / Internal Team]

Please interview me in rounds to clarify all requirements, trade-offs, and design decisions before drafting the document. Present a numbered set of questions per round and provide your recommended answer for each question.

Before vs. after output comparison

Without /grill-me: AI guesses intent based on generic training data, producing shallow drafts that require heavy manual editing. Gaps are invisible until you read the output.

With /grill-me: Key business logic and constraints can be resolved upfront during the interview. The AI is designed to surface gaps early rather than fill them with assumptions, and the resulting draft is intended to be well-structured and matched to your actual goals.

Pitfalls and pro-tips

Pro-tips for maximum efficiency

• Accept the recommended options when they fit. If the AI's (Recommended) choice matches your vision, reply: "Go with Option 1." No need to type long answers.
• Upload background context alongside your initial prompt. Attaching past performance metrics or a brand guidelines document can help the AI ask sharper, more relevant questions.
• Use /grill-me when you feel stuck. The interview process is a useful tool for organizing your own thinking, not only for producing documents.

Common pitfalls to avoid

• Skipping the interview. Replying with "just write it" bypasses the intended benefit. A few minutes of scoping can help avoid multiple editing rounds later.
• Over-explaining in your opening prompt. Keep the initial request brief and let the /grill-me interview extract the details. A short, clear opening works better than a dense paragraph.
• Forgetting to install the skill first. /grill-me is a custom skill that requires a one-time setup. Ask your team administrator or your AI assistant for installation guidance.

What's next in the handbook series?

Now that you have seen how /grill-me can help align on requirements before starting a project, what happens when you need to collect structured feedback from multiple team members or clients?

Up Next in Article 2: /to-questionnaire: Turn Messy Feedback into Instant Structured Clarity. Learn how to convert unstructured emails, meeting transcripts, and vague client requests into clean, fillable form questionnaires.