ce-ideate

ce-ideate generates and critically evaluates grounded ideas about a topic, producing a ranked ideation artifact rather than requirements, plans, or code. It is the first stage of a compound-engineering workflow: ce-ideate answers "what are the strongest ideas worth exploring?", ce-brainstorm then defines a chosen idea precisely, and ce-plan determines how to build it. Typical triggers include requests like "what should I improve", "give me ideas", "ideate on X", or "surprise me" -- cases where the user wants AI-generated suggestions instead of refinement of an existing idea.

Its quality mechanism is explicit rejection with reasons: generate many candidates, critique all of them, then explain only the survivors. A core principle is to ground before ideating by scanning the actual codebase first, so output is tied to the repository rather than abstract product advice. An optional argument supplies context -- a concept, a path, a research artifact to draw on, a constraint such as "low-complexity quick wins", or a volume hint such as "top 3" -- and with no argument it proceeds open-ended. The skill asks questions through the platform's blocking question tool (AskUserQuestion in Claude Code, with equivalents in Codex, Gemini, and Pi), one at a time, falling back to numbered chat options only when no blocking tool exists.

Sub-agent dispatch is tiered by task shape rather than a hardcoded model name: an extraction tier (cheapest capable model) for evidence scouting, a generation tier (mid-tier) for evidence-driven ideation, and a ceiling tier (the orchestrator's model) for cross-cutting synthesis and final arbitration; surprise-me mode and a "go deep" override raise the whole fleet to the ceiling tier. Output format is resolved early and is exclusive -- the artifact is written as either HTML or markdown, with HTML the default since ideation docs are read mainly by humans weighing directions, and a pipeline override forcing markdown. The artifact is written to docs/ideation/ when present, else a temporary path.