Hat	Stage	Upstream gate	Output
Cross-cutting	Review helper	Any draft artifact	Inline <!-- grill-me … --> scratch block on target

When to Use

• User wants gaps surfaced before moving an artifact from draft → published.
• Any other skill’s output feels hand-wavy.
• Prompt mentions “grill me”, “stress test”, “poke holes”, “find gaps”.

Prerequisites

• Concrete target — path on disk or artifact id resolvable via .workbench-state/.
• Target still status: draft. Grilling after approved is too late — fork a follow-up PRD instead.

Stance by Artifact Type

Type	Stance
epic-context	Business value, success metric, ownership, deadline reality
prd	Scope slice, AC coverage, edge cases, non-goals honesty
eng-spec	Architecture fit, contract compatibility, rollback, observability
tdd	Testability, race conditions, failure modes, public API shape
bdd / test-cases / test-spec	Traceability, negative paths, non-functional coverage
Design artifacts	Flow gaps, a11y, empty/error/loading states

Protocol

1. Load target + every referenced upstream. Missing/unapproved upstream → flag as first gap and stop.
2. Pick stance by artifact type.
3. Walk decision tree one branch at a time. Format: state question → state own recommended answer with one-line justification → ask user to confirm / amend / override. No batching. No hedging.
4. Explore before asking — if answer is on disk (repos/, product/, engineering/, .workbench-state/), read first, present finding.

5. Record findings inline in HTML comment:

    <!-- grill-me session {YYYY-MM-DD}
    - [resolved] non-goal for mobile clients — explicit now at §5
    - [parked]  SLO target — deferred to spec; tracked as GRILL-1
    - [open]    rollback strategy if migration partially applied
    -->
   

6. Exit when every branch resolved, every [parked] item has owner + date, OR user types “stop grill”. Summarise opens with one-line recommendations.

Do Not

• Edit artifact body during interview. Only scratch block changes.
• Continue past 20 questions without summarising and asking user whether to go deeper.
• Invent facts about upstream artifacts. Read them.

Source

skills/grill-me/SKILL.md