Brainstorming Partner

Overview

Brainstorming Partner is an interactive skill that helps you generate, evaluate, and refine ideas using multiple proven brainstorming frameworks. Instead of brainstorming alone, you get a reliable AI partner that applies six distinct frameworks to your challenge, evaluates each idea's feasibility, impact, and novelty, and presents ranked results for iterative refinement.

Use this skill when you need to:

Generate innovative ideas for products, features, or services
Solve complex business or technical problems
Explore multiple perspectives on a challenge
Evaluate ideas before committing resources
Have structured idea-generation conversations with AI assistance

Brainstorming Workflow

1. Present Your Challenge

Start by describing what you want to brainstorm. Provide:

Topic or Challenge: The problem, opportunity, or area you want to explore
Context: Any constraints, goals, or background relevant to the brainstorming
Desired Outcomes: What success looks like (optional but helpful)

Example: "I need to brainstorm how to reduce our 40% onboarding drop-off rate. Our users get frustrated during setup. What could we explore?"

2. Multi-Framework Idea Generation

The skill applies six complementary frameworks to generate diverse ideas:

SCAMPER - Systematic innovation through substitution, combination, adaptation, modification, repurposing, elimination, and reversal
Six Thinking Hats - Multi-perspective thinking (facts, emotions, risks, benefits, creativity, process)
Mind Mapping - Hierarchical exploration of problems, stakeholders, solutions, and connections
Lateral Thinking - Breaking patterns through random word association and unexpected connections
Divergence-Convergence - Pure generation followed by structured evaluation
Forced Connections - Combining your challenge with concepts from unrelated domains

See references/frameworks.md for detailed framework descriptions.

3. Idea Evaluation

Each generated idea is evaluated on three dimensions:

Feasibility (0-10): How practical and actionable is it? Can you actually do it?
Impact (0-10): How significant and valuable would it be if implemented?
Novelty (0-10): How original is it? What's the degree of newness?

Composite Score = (Feasibility + Impact + Novelty) / 3

See references/evaluation_metrics.md for detailed rubrics and scoring guidance.

4. Ranked Results & Interactive Iteration

Ideas are ranked by composite score and presented with:

Individual metric scores with reasoning
Overall assessment (Strong/Good/Fair/Weak)
Framework source (which technique generated it)
Full description

You then iterate: ask for clarification, request refinement, explore specific ideas deeper, or generate new ideas based on feedback.

Using the Skill with Agents

Running Idea Generation

Execute the idea generation script:

python scripts/generate_ideas.py "Your brainstorming topic" \
  --context "Additional context or constraints" \
  --output ideas.json

This generates idea prompts across all six frameworks organized by type.

Evaluating Ideas

Run the evaluation script to score ideas on Feasibility, Impact, and Novelty:

python scripts/evaluate_ideas.py ideas.json \
  --context "Your context" \
  --topic "Your topic" \
  --output evaluated_ideas.json

This produces:

Individual scores for each metric
Composite rankings
Score distribution statistics
Assessment summary for each idea

Testing the Skill

Test prompts are available in evals/evals.json covering:

Product feature brainstorming
Business problem-solving
Creative campaign ideation
Technical architecture decisions
Content strategy
User experience improvement

Evaluation Metrics Reference

Feasibility Scoring

How practical is the idea given real-world constraints?

9-10: Can implement immediately with existing resources
7-8: Achievable with some additional resources or effort
5-6: Possible but requires significant effort or new skills
3-4: Very difficult; requires major changes or external dependencies
1-2: Extremely difficult or unrealistic
0: Impossible or violates fundamental constraints

Impact Scoring

How valuable and transformative would it be?

9-10: Transformational—solves major problems or creates substantial value
7-8: Significant—meaningfully improves the situation
5-6: Moderate—provides measurable benefits
3-4: Marginal—provides minor improvements
1-2: Minimal—barely noticeable impact
0: No positive impact or negative effects

Novelty Scoring

How original and new is the idea?

9-10: Highly unique—truly novel in this space
7-8: Original—significant variation on existing approaches
5-6: Somewhat new—adaptation with new elements
3-4: Incremental—minor variations on standard approaches
1-2: Minimal newness—obvious or widely-used
0: Not new—direct copy of existing solutions

Composite Score Interpretation

8-10: Strong idea—pursue aggressively
6-7.9: Good idea—consider with conditions
5-5.9: Fair idea—useful for specific contexts
3-4.9: Weak idea—needs refinement
0-2.9: Poor idea—unlikely to pursue

Brainstorming Frameworks

SCAMPER

Systematically applies seven techniques to existing solutions:

Substitute: Replace components or attributes
Combine: Merge with other products or ideas
Adapt: Adjust for other purposes
Modify: Change form, scale, or attributes
Put to other uses: Repurpose or use differently
Eliminate: Remove or simplify
Reverse: Invert order or direction

Best for: Product improvements, process optimization, features addition

Six Thinking Hats

Uses six thinking modes as "hats" for parallel thinking:

White Hat: Facts and data—what do we know?
Red Hat: Emotions and intuition—what do we feel?
Black Hat: Critical thinking—what could go wrong?
Yellow Hat: Optimism—what's the best case?
Green Hat: Creativity—what else could work?
Blue Hat: Process and organization—how do we proceed?

Best for: Complex problems, team decision-making, fair evaluation

Mind Mapping

Creates hierarchical structure showing relationships:

Central theme with primary and secondary branches
Shows problem aspects, stakeholders, solutions, and connections
Identifies gaps and relationships visually

Best for: Breaking down complex topics, exploring relationships, identifying gaps

Lateral Thinking

Uses random stimuli to break habitual patterns:

Force connections between unrelated concepts and your challenge
Explore unexpected associations
Follow tangential paths to novel solutions

Best for: Breaking mental blocks, truly novel ideas, creative problem-solving

Divergence-Convergence

Separates generation from evaluation:

Divergence: Generate many ideas without judgment
Convergence: Evaluate and filter ideas systematically

Best for: Encouraging quantity and novelty, preventing premature judgment

Forced Connections

Combines unrelated concepts and domains:

List key attributes of your challenge
Combine with concepts from different fields
Explore implications of combinations

Best for: Cross-disciplinary innovation, unique positioning, product mashups

Iterative Refinement

After evaluation, iterate with your partner:

Dive Deeper: Ask for more details on high-scoring ideas
Combine Ideas: Merge complementary ideas from different frameworks
Refine Weak Ideas: Explore how to improve lower-scoring ideas
Explore Trade-offs: Understand feasibility vs. impact trade-offs
Generate More: Request additional ideas in specific directions
Prioritize: Decide which ideas to pursue based on your strategy

Example conversation:

"Can you elaborate on the top three ideas?"
"How could we make the high-novelty but low-feasibility ideas more doable?"
"Which combination of these ideas would be most impactful?"
"Generate more ideas focused specifically on reducing complexity"

Core Capabilities

1. Multi-Framework Idea Generation

Applies six proven brainstorming frameworks to generate diverse perspectives on your challenge.

2. Feasibility-Impact-Novelty Evaluation

Scores each idea on three dimensions to provide balanced assessment of viability and value.

3. Ranked Presentation

Ideas ordered by composite score with detailed reasoning for each metric.

4. Framework Transparency

Each idea tagged with source framework so you understand which technique generated it.

5. Interactive Iteration

Refine ideas, combine approaches, and generate new ideas based on feedback.

6. Contextual Adaptation

Frameworks applied flexibly to any brainstorming scenario: products, processes, content, strategy, technical decisions, etc.

Scripts Reference

`scripts/generate_ideas.py`

Generates brainstorming ideas using all six frameworks.

Usage:

python generate_ideas.py "Topic or challenge" \
  --context "Additional context" \
  --output ideas.json

Output: JSON file with ideas organized by framework.

Parameters:

topic (required): Your brainstorming topic
--context: Additional constraints or background
--output: Output file path (default: ideas.json)

`scripts/evaluate_ideas.py`

Evaluates ideas on Feasibility, Impact, and Novelty metrics.