interview
/octopus:interview is the greenfield grilling command — it runs when you
have an idea but no plan yet. It walks the decision tree one question at a
time until the intent is concrete enough to become a PRD, a plan, or a
directly actionable implementation brief.
What it solves
Vague asks produce wrong features. “We need something for payments” is not a brief — it is a source of weeks of misaligned work. The discipline of specifying before designing exists for good reason, but running it ad-hoc in a conversation means questions get batched, yes/no answers replace open exploration, and the result is a plan with silent assumptions baked in.
interview enforces the discipline structurally: one question per turn,
explicit tracking of what is established and what is still unresolved, and
a confirmed summary at the end that the user signs off on before any design
or implementation starts.
How it works
The interview has a clear shape:
- Root statement — the goal is restated in one sentence and confirmed before any branching begins. If you cannot state the goal in one sentence, the first questions target the root.
- One question per turn — each question targets exactly one of: a constraint, an actor, a boundary, a trade-off, or a success criterion. No batching, no “and also…” hedges.
- Visible progress — every 3–5 questions, the established facts and still-unresolved branches are shown in a short recap so neither party loses track of where the tree is.
- Resolution and hand-off — when every branch has an answer and the
success criteria are concrete enough to test against, a structured summary
is produced and the right next skill is suggested:
doc-alignif CONTEXT.md exists,doc-prdif the work is ticket-sized,implementif it starts now.
interview is the counterpart to doc-align (which validates an existing
plan against existing docs). The natural sequence is
interview → doc-align → doc-prd → implement. For area-level exploration
that produces multiple backlog items rather than one scoped feature, use
/octopus:doc-research instead.
Usage & parameters
/octopus:interview <one-sentence statement of the problem or goal><one-sentence statement>— the root of the decision tree. If not supplied, the first turn of the interview is dedicated to producing one. Do not start branching until the root is confirmed.