Asking User Questions

The workflow family's shared norms for ask_user_question: how to interview in rounds, what makes a question worth asking, how to shape options, and how to degrade when answers don't come. Process skills name this concept at the steps that ask; when to ask, and where the answers get recorded, stays with the referencing skill.

Interview in rounds until nothing is assumed

• Map the subject as a design tree: every decision branches into the decisions that hang off it. The frontier is every open decision whose prerequisites are already settled, the questions you can ask now without guessing at answers you haven't heard.
• One call = one round = the whole frontier, with no cap on its size. A question whose answer depends on another question still open belongs to a later round, never the same one. Never split independent questions across back-to-back calls.
• The call blocks the current run. Answers arrive as this tool's result. Don't keep working on the blocked step or assume an answer until it arrives, seconds or days later. A composer message sent while the card is open supersedes the round: the card closes unanswered and the message arrives as the next user message, so treat it as the user's reply and re-ask only what still matters.
• After each round, recompute the frontier: answers settle branches, unblock their dependents, and prune branches that no longer apply. Ask the next round; never pre-write later rounds.
• The interview is done when the frontier is empty, every branch visited, nothing material silently assumed. Then continue the referencing skill's next step; there is no extra "are we aligned?" round (the referencing skill's own gates still apply).
• Depth follows the work, not a quota: work with no open user decision gets zero rounds; a decision-heavy change may take several.

Facts are yours, decisions are theirs