Allow an optional decision round for vague plans

[geldmacher]

Idea

When a planning assignment is vague or underspecified, plan-work may run a short decision round and offer a concrete recommendation the user can accept or steer. The round asks only what blocks a sound plan: a missing goal, boundaries, interfaces, success checks, or a material trade-off that would change the plan. A few focused questions, then stop.

This is the small positive alternative Dennis asked for after workflow#8. That discussion already argued against importing Matt Pocock’s grill-me and grill-with-docs. The spark was Matt’s “specialize grill-me” note (tweet): a product-design bar, a security survey, a preview, and a relentless design-tree interview. Workflow takes only the useful fragment for vague scope, and leaves the rest where it already lives.

Clear assignments are unchanged. They still need no interview and no advance design of routine details.

Why this shape

The round stays inside existing plan-work. It does not become a new skill, a slash command, or a gate on Plan → Implement or Auto-Work. A clear assignment still proceeds straight to a proportionate plan. Dark and Light still do not resolve consequential missing choices by assumption; the recommendation is something to accept or steer, not a silent default.

Matt’s other three tips are already covered elsewhere, so this change does not pull them into Workflow:

• Product-design bar: the Design plugin.
• Security and auth on a material change: plan-work’s existing second-order line.
• A preview of the change: Efficiency’s change-communication / show-me sketches.

What was rejected

• A grill-me or grill-with-docs skill.
• A mandatory interview, including as an Auto-Work or Plan → Implement gate.
• A required glossary.
• Relentlessly expanding the design tree.
• Putting a product-design bar inside Workflow.

What changed

• skills/plan-work/SKILL.md — optional short decision round for a vague assignment, with the existing “clear assignments need no interview” rule left in place.
• docs/manual-workflow.md and docs/behavior-validation.md — the same rule beside the existing clarify guidance, including a walkthrough row that still expects no interview for a clear small change.
• docs/methodology-sources.md — why this is the lean alternative to grill-me, and what was not imported.
• scripts/context-limits.json — planSetupGap was 3519 against a 3500 limit after the plan-work paragraph. That one scenario is now 3900 (measured maximum plus 10%, rounded up to 100). Other limits are unchanged.
• Unreleased changelog note. No version bump; release still promotes that note.

No new skill folder.

Checks

• npm run link-check, npm run validate, and npm run context-budget passed. Cursor plan is 2132 estimated tokens (limit 2900). Cursor planSetupGap is 3519 (limit 3900).
• npm test: 77 passed. The 24 GitHub release tests fail in this environment because origin is rewritten to an authenticated URL (repository must identify one GitHub repository). That check is unchanged by this diff.