Ideation Helper

Transform brain dumps into structured project plans: briefs, phased plans, and action steps — designed for everyone, not just developers.

Based on nicknisi/ideation, adapted for non-technical projects like personal goals, home renovation, event planning, process design, and more.

Skills

ideation-helper

Transforms raw, unstructured brain dumps into actionable project artifacts through a confidence-gated workflow.

Use this when you have messy ideas, scattered thoughts, or dictated stream-of-consciousness about something you want to accomplish.

How to invoke:

/ideation-helper

[provide your brain dump - messy dictation, scattered thoughts, half-formed ideas]

The workflow:

1. Intake — Accept your messy, unstructured input without judgment
2. Context gathering — Scan existing files and ask about your situation, constraints, and resources
3. Confidence scoring — Assess understanding across 5 dimensions (0-100)
4. Clarifying questions — If confidence < 95%, ask targeted questions
5. Brief — When ≥ 95% confident, write brief.md to ./docs/ideation/{project}/
6. Phasing & action steps — Determine phases, optionally generate plans, generate action steps
7. Quality check — Self-review action steps for verification coverage before presenting
8. Execution handoff — Present strategy (sequential, parallel, or agent team)

Output artifacts:

All artifacts are written to ./docs/ideation/{project-name}/:

brief.md                              # Problem, goals, success criteria, scope
plan-phase-1.md                       # Phase 1 requirements (only if plans chosen)
action-steps-phase-1.md               # Phase 1 action steps
action-steps-template-{pattern}.md    # Shared template for repeatable phases
action-steps-phase-N.md               # Per-phase delta or full action steps

Confidence Scoring

The skill scores your brain dump across 5 dimensions (20 points each):

Dimension	Question
Problem Clarity	Do I understand what problem we're solving?
Goal Definition	Are the goals specific and measurable?
Success Criteria	Can I write a checklist to verify "done"?
Scope Boundaries	Do I know what's in and out of scope?
Consistency	Are there contradictions to resolve?

Thresholds:

• < 70: Major gaps — 5+ clarifying questions
• 70-84: Moderate gaps — 3-5 questions
• 85-94: Minor gaps — 1-2 questions
• ≥ 95: Ready to generate brief

Commands

/execute-spec

Executes action steps generated by the ideation skill. Reads the file, creates tasks with dependencies, and works through them step-by-step with verification.

# Auto-detect next unblocked task
/execute-spec

# Execute specific action steps
/execute-spec docs/ideation/my-project/action-steps-phase-1.md

# Parallel execution for independent tasks
/execute-spec --parallel

Installation

From GitHub

# In Claude Code, add the repo as a marketplace
/plugin marketplace add your-username/ideation-helper

# Then install
/plugin install ideation-helper

From local directory

# Add the parent directory as a marketplace
/plugin marketplace add /path/to/parent/directory

# Then install
/plugin install ideation-helper

Version

0.7.0