sharpen-first - Sharpen the axe before cutting wood - fool-proof requirement clarification for AI agents.

Mirrored in three places, same version everywhere: Hugging Face (you are here) · GitLab · GitHub

Get the files - GitLab is the most reliable plain-git route:

git clone https://gitlab.com/LucioLiu/sharpen-first.git

# or from this page
hf download LucioLiu/sharpen-first --repo-type dataset --local-dir ./sharpen-first

Then drop the folder into your agent's skills directory - ~/.claude/skills/sharpen-first/ for Claude Code, ~/.agents/skills/sharpen-first/ for Codex, or your client's equivalent.

Note: links to github.com inside the text below point to the GitHub mirror; if one does not resolve, use the GitLab mirror above - it carries the same content.

Licence: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 - the LICENSE file in this repo is authoritative.

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English | 简体中文

sharpen-first · sharpen the axe 🔪

Sharpen the axe before cutting wood — fool-proof requirement clarification for AI agents.

Ever told an AI "make me one of those… you know, the thing" and gotten back a confident wall of output that's nothing like what you meant?

The problem usually isn't that the model is dumb — it's that the requirement is mush. sharpen-first is a "requirement clarification" capability you install on an AI agent: when your goal is ambiguous, a big task has no success criteria, or you yourself say "I haven't really thought this through," the agent stops guessing and instead uses a fool-proof questioning method to sharpen the requirement with you — before it starts working.

What it looks like (30-second tour)

You: make me one of those intro pages, something nice-looking
AI: (sharpen-first triggers) Question 1: what's this intro page for?
    A. Product homepage (recommended — fits your recent project)
    B. Personal résumé / portfolio
    C. Event flyer landing page
You: whatever, your call
AI: (doesn't push back, adopts the recommendation and flags it as an assumption)
    Got it — going with the product homepage, flagged as [Assumption].
    Question 2: … (up to 5 questions, then wraps up)

    📋 Consensus sheet
    [Goal] … [Out of scope] … [Success criteria] …
    [Key assumptions] Product homepage (you didn't confirm this — check here first if it's wrong)
    [Open items] …
    I'll start once you confirm.

Core mechanics (why it's fool-proof)

Mechanism	What it fixes
Max 5 questions, multiple-choice first, every question carries a recommendation	People who struggle to articulate can't answer open questions well, but they can pick from options
Answer "whatever / don't know" → adopt the recommendation + flag [Assumption], never press twice	Never grinds a user down
Small tasks take a "guess-and-confirm" shortcut, one line and move on	No five-question interrogation for trivial asks (over-sharpening is an explicit anti-pattern)
Idea not yet formed → upgrade from "asking" to "helping you think" (restate as 2-3 directions for the user to pick from)	When there's genuinely no answer in the user's head yet, pure questioning just draws blanks
Two wrap-up modes: a consensus sheet (start working directly) / a seven-section prompt (take it elsewhere to feed another AI, assumptions never evaporate)	Covers both downstream needs
Course-correction after work starts: any drift from the consensus sheet forces a stop-and-realign, with the cost of switching spelled out	Fixes "the big project drifts further off course the longer it runs"
Blind-spot probing (added in 1.2): before picking a question, ask yourself "what is he least sure about / what's the biggest omission / what hasn't he noticed"	The four core elements only ask "what do you want" — blind-spot probing asks "what haven't you seen" — otherwise the consensus sheet just inherits your blind spots as-is
Deep-grill mode (added in 1.2, opt-in): say "grill me / interrogate me" → the 5-question cap lifts, and it interrogates branch by branch down a decision tree until real consensus is reached	Fool-proofing protects people who struggle to articulate; deep-grill serves people who actively want to be interrogated — it only kicks in when you say so

Install

Option 1 · GitHub CLI (recommended, auto-updating)

gh skill install LucioLiu/sharpen-first sharpen-first --agent claude-code --scope user

Option 2 · Manual: copy this repo's SKILL.md to ~/.claude/skills/sharpen-first/SKILL.md. (Note: manual copies have no update channel — re-copy by hand when a new version ships.) Chinese-speaking users should copy SKILL.zh-CN.md instead and rename it to SKILL.md locally.

Other tools (Cursor / Codex / any LLM): SKILL.md is itself a complete, portable markdown guide — feed it to your tool as a rules document.

How it triggers

No commands to remember once installed — the agent judges three signals on its own (a goal with multiple readings / a big task with no standard / you saying you haven't thought it through) and triggers automatically. You can also just say "sharpen first" to force it, or say "grill me / interrogate me" to enter deep-grill mode (uncapped interrogation until real consensus).

Lineage & credit

Combines obra/superpowers's brainstorming (one question at a time / multiple-choice first / options carry trade-offs) with github/spec-kit's /speckit.clarify (coverage scanning / impact-ranked ordering / a 5-question cap) — both were built for writing code; sharpen-first is built for "any task that's unclear." Five extreme-scenario walkthroughs were run at design time, but the raw transcripts weren't published with the repo, so that alone can't be cited as proof current behavior has been tested; the stable evaluation cases are not published in this repo, and they stay not-run until an independent agent has actually run them. Version 1.2 absorbed the deep-grill interrogation playbook from the mattpocock/skills grilling family (branch-by-branch decision-tree questioning / facts-vs-decisions boundary / dependency-ordered question batching), and introduced the blind-spot probing engine.

Part of the capability-block architecture behind the Nuwa digital-employee framework, usable standalone — more blocks live in that repo (not in this folder).

Companion blocks (sibling skills, take what you need)

• dont-reinvent — found out mid-clarification that the agent lacks a capability? Look for an existing wheel before building one.
• handoff-protocol — in a multi-agent team, the handoff discipline for delegating work once a consensus sheet is settled.

Version & updates

Current version 1.2.0 (see .claude-plugin/plugin.json). Updates are always published to this repo; gh skill install users run gh skill update sharpen-first to upgrade, manual-copy users should revisit this page and compare version numbers.

Verification boundary

The unified structural test entry point and the standalone behavioral case bundle are not published in this repository yet — don't expect a tests or evals directory in what you installed. Passing structural tests would not be the same as the agent's behavior passing anyway: the two stable behavioral cases stay not-run until an independent subject + judge leave a receipt.

License

PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — free for personal and non-commercial use.

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Both language editions are maintained in sync. If they ever diverge, the Chinese edition is authoritative — please open an issue if you spot one.