Prototype

Build a throwaway prototype at the fidelity that can answer this question, before committing an approach later work will treat as given. Then apply the decisions or hand off.

Do not fake the dimension being tested. Modality, fidelity, and medium all follow from that one rule. A question about how a flow or state model behaves is settled by driving it, so a screen that only looks like the product does not answer it. A question about how a layout or a mark reads is settled by seeing it at real finish, so a thin sketch does not answer it either. The user's own perception settles the question, never your judgment of the artifact.

Result: the user decided how the product should work or feel against a prototype that did not fake what they were deciding. Next consumer: an existing markdown Product Contract, or ce-brainstorm / ce-plan with this session as the seed. Done: the user settled the questions that needed an artifact, or they apply and continue into brainstorm or plan. Their choice is the settlement, not a direction you inferred. Not: a decision a cheap sketch settles, polish, or shipping the prototype as a final product.

If there is no person to experience the prototype — mode:pipeline, a headless run, or a calling skill that reports no human is present — stop. Do not start a preview or invent how it should feel. Return that this skill needs a human. A calling skill that has a human present (an interactive lfg run, for example) is an ordinary attended run.

User-runnable invocation rendering. The attended re-run in that refusal and the next-skill recommendation when the user applies print invocation syntax. Default to /ce-prototype, /ce-brainstorm, and /ce-plan; use $ce-prototype, $ce-brainstorm, and $ce-plan only on Codex or a host that documents dollar-prefixed skill invocation. Render only the invocation as inline code; output one form only.

Scope the question

Read references/scoping.md before you ask the user anything or touch the repo. That read is not optional. It defines how the question arrives and the scoped repo read of what the question touches — do not scan the tree. It also defines narrow vs wide, sizing, the go-ahead message, and how the remaining questions change after each decision. Do not build until authorized. A request that already is to prototype a named thing is that authorization after scoping.