grill-me: it asks you the questions first

What it is and why it matters

You ask Claude for something, it gets going and hands you something else entirely. It didn't write bad code: it understood something else. And you redo everything from scratch. The README of the mattpocock/skills collection calls this the most common problem in building software.

grill-me does the opposite. Before working, Claude looks up on its own whatever it finds in your files, then asks you questions in rounds, numbered, each with the answer it recommends: if you're fine with it, you just say yes. The decisions stay yours, and it doesn't act until you confirm you understand each other.

It's a skill, meaning a package of instructions for Claude Code, inside mattpocock/skills: a free collection, under the MIT license, with more than 300,000 stars on GitHub at the end of October (the stars belong to the whole collection). The README says "not vibe coding". In my view it matters even more if you build without reading the code: if you don't check the how, agreeing on the what is the best defense you have.

1. Install it: two ways, pick one

The README is clear: only one way, because if you install both you end up with every skill twice.

Way 1: the plugin, which updates itself

It's the one I recommend. It's in Anthropic's official marketplace, the plugin catalog Claude Code already knows, under the name mattpocock-skills. Run this line in your terminal, outside Claude Code:

claude plugin install mattpocock-skills@claude-plugins-official

It installs it for you, in all your projects. It loads in your next session, or with /reload-plugins in the one that's open. If you've never opened Claude Code in the terminal on that computer, first run claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official.

To check, type / in the chat: a plugin's skills carry its name in front. Look for this one:

/mattpocock-skills:grill-me

With the plugin, the command has the plugin's name in front, and that's the one I tested; with the files from way 2 it's /grill-me. The plugin's updates arrive on their own.

Way 2: the files in your project, which you update yourself

If you want files you can read and change, run this line from your project folder. You need a recent version of Node.js, the program that runs npx.

npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills

1. Among the tools, pick Claude Code.
2. Among the skills, take grill-me and grilling as well: grill-me on its own just calls grilling, which holds the actual instructions.
3. Open Claude Code in the folder and type /grill-me.

It installs them in the project you're in; with -g you get them everywhere. To update them: npx skills@latest update.

2. How to use it: your request, then the rounds of questions

grill-me doesn't start by itself: Claude can't launch it on its own initiative, you launch it. Type the command and, right after it, what you want to do, in your own words. Replace the parts in [ ]:

/mattpocock-skills:grill-me I want to [add a pricing page]. It's for [who uses it] and it's meant to [the problem it solves].

From there, grilling's instructions tell Claude to work like this:

• It looks up the facts itself: whatever it can find out on its own, it doesn't ask you, it sends a sub-agent (a separate helper) to look for it.
• You make the decisions: every question is numbered and has the recommended answer underneath, worded so that a yes accepts it.
• A round holds only the questions you can answer right now; the others wait for the next round.
• It ends when nothing is left silently assumed, and it doesn't act until you confirm you understand each other.

To answer, a yes is enough. If an answer doesn't sit right, say so with its number:

Yes to all except 2: [your choice]. On 4 I have a doubt: [the doubt].

3. A real round of questions of mine

I tried it on October 30 in Claude Code, on my site's code, with the plugin. I launched /mattpocock-skills:grill-me with this request: "I want to add a page to the site, 'this week's guides', with each video's cover, so that anyone who comments GUIDA under an older video finds the right guide even if a newer one is already at the top of /guida."

Before any question, it looked at the code on its own and wrote me what was already there:

• /guida is a single list, sorted from the newest guide.
• There's no field for the cover or for the link to the video, and the covers live outside the site's code.

Then it wrote that the questions didn't depend on each other, and asked me all of them in one round. Six, each with its recommended answer (I've shortened them):

1. Where do the covers come from? Recommendation: an optional cover field in every guide; it extracts the images itself from the reels on my computer.
2. What does "this week" mean? You'll find it below, word for word.
3. Address and languages? Recommendation: /guida/settimana, in every language of the site, like /guida.
4. How do people who comment GUIDA get there? Recommendation: a clearly visible block at the top of /guida that leads to the new page; it doesn't touch the social accounts.
5. What does each card show? Recommendation: cover, title, number and date, newest first. No description: whoever arrives should recognize the video from its cover.
6. And after the week? Recommendation: the guide leaves this page and stays in /guida, with no week-by-week archive, for now.

Question 2, as it came in (translated from Italian)

❓ Q2 - What "this week" means: the guides with a date in the last 7 days, calculated at every build. If there are fewer than 7, the page fills up to 7 with the most recent ones, so it's never nearly empty. An alternative is the calendar week, Monday to Sunday.

➡️ Yes: a rolling last 7 days, filled up to 7 guides. The calendar week makes everything disappear every Monday, right when the people commenting under Sunday's video arrive.

In the request, "this week" seemed clear, but there were two ways to read it, and one emptied the page every Monday. Without the questions, Claude would have made that choice. All you need is a yes, or your own choice on that number.

4. When to use it, and in what order

The README says to use it for every change. I keep it for changes where one word can mean two things: a new page, a feature, the login. The order:

1. grill-me: you agree on what to do.
2. Plan mode: Claude writes how it will do it, file by file, and changes nothing until you approve. How I use it is in the PIANO guide.
3. The code, only after you've approved the plan.

Once the rounds are over, I move to the plan by typing /plan in front of the message:

/plan Make the plan for what we decided in the questions. If you need a choice that wasn't in the answers, ask me before putting it in the plan.

And the three-line template from the PROMPT guide? There, you write a clear request; grill-me looks for what the request is missing. They work well together. It's too much, though, for a typo, a color, a one-line change: for those, just ask.

grill-me or grill-with-docs?

The README presents grill-me for plans, ideas and design, even outside code. For code there's grill-with-docs: the same questions, plus a project glossary (GLOSSARY.md) and ADRs, short documents that record a decision and why. You first run setup-matt-pocock-skills once per project.

Common mistakes

• Installing the plugin and also the files with npx: every skill twice. Pick one.
• With npx, taking grill-me without grilling: it's left with no instructions.
• Saying yes to everything without reading: the recommended answers are guesses, not decisions.

Checklist

• I installed grill-me one way only
• When I type / in Claude Code I see grill-me
• After the command I wrote my request in my own words
• I read every recommended answer before saying yes
• Only after the last round did I move on to plan mode

Frequently asked questions