/brainstorm — Clarify Goals Before Planning

Purpose: Separate WHAT from HOW. Explore the problem space before committing to a solution.

Loop position

Upstream of move 1 (shape intent as BDD) of the operating loop. Consumes a free-text goal; produces Given/When/Then-shaped acceptance examples that /discovery can fold into a BDD intent issue. The Capture step (phase 4 below) is not complete until at least one happy path and one critical edge are written as testable Gherkin — "it should work" is not a captured example.

Two modes

/brainstorm runs in one of two modes. They are complementary, not exclusive — a session may start in ideation mode, pick one idea, and hand it to goal-clarification for HOW-exploration.

Mode	Use when	Shape
Goal-clarification (default; the four phases below)	The goal names ONE specific capability (`"add JWT auth"`, `"fix the login bug"`)	Sharpen the WHAT, explore the HOW for that single goal.
Ideation (open-ended; see Ideation Mode)	The goal is open-ended (`"improve the project"`, `"what should we build next"`) OR Phase 1 returns `exploring` with no single goal emerging OR `--ideate` is passed	Generate MANY candidate improvements, winnow ruthlessly, operationalize the survivors.

The full mode-selection table lives in references/ideation-mode.md.