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A classroom, a bathroom renovation, and a eulogy.
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͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"><br>
Hey Andrea,<br>
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<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">There’s a good chance you’ve heard about my <a href="https://7751c435.click.kit-mail3.com/xmu6xnrw77s6hp4rpd3s5h20208k2s233nn5dnwr8zpxq83emml4g235pzprk25q508rdq343logv2kw2kx0q2lq70pknvke6v8w356gvr6oz6n9529gq79qg5wbdd66q/n2hohquvz77272t0ug/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYWloZXJvLmRldi9zL2NyYXNoLWNvdXJzZS1ncmlsbC1tZQ==" style="color:#0875c1" url-id="1878136621"><code>/grill-me</code> skill</a>. You may have even tried it yourself.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">It’s my most popular open source tool by far. My skills repo recently passed 200,000 stars on GitHub.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">In case this is your first time hearing about it, here’s a quick primer.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"><strong>Grilling</strong> is an incredible way to kick off development work, whether you’re adding a feature to an existing codebase or exploring a whole new project.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">It’s free, MIT licensed, and available for Claude Code, Codex, and other Agent Skills-compatible harnesses.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">When you invoke <code>/grill-me</code>, or its more powerful variant <code>/grill-with-docs</code>, the instructions guide your coding agent to interview you thoroughly about the project you want to start.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">The entry point is tiny, and <a href="https://7751c435.click.kit-mail3.com/xmu6xnrw77s6hp4rpd3s5h20208k2s233nn5dnwr8zpxq83emml4g235pzprk25q508rdq343logv2kw2kx0q2lq70pknvke6v8w356gvr6oz6n9529gq79qg5wbdd66q/reh8h9umg66k6zh6u6/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYWloZXJvLmRldi9zL2NyYXNoLWNvdXJzZS1ncmlsbGluZy1zb3VyY2U=" style="color:#0875c1" url-id="1878136624">you can read the full grilling instructions yourself</a>. They give the agent one specific goal: reach a shared understanding about the work ahead.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">The idea has travelled pretty far. Satya Nadella even described a <a href="https://7751c435.click.kit-mail3.com/xmu6xnrw77s6hp4rpd3s5h20208k2s233nn5dnwr8zpxq83emml4g235pzprk25q508rdq343logv2kw2kx0q2lq70pknvke6v8w356gvr6oz6n9529gq79qg5wbdd66q/8ghqh3uomrrwr6slu9/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYWloZXJvLmRldi9zL2NyYXNoLWNvdXJzZS1kcmlsbC1tZQ==" style="color:#0875c1" url-id="1878136626">“drill me” pattern</a> that looked a lot like grilling. I’m pretty sure he was grilling, not drilling.</p>
<h2 style="font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1em;margin:0;font-size:1.5em;margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#000000;line-height:1.5">The power of shared understanding</h2>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">Most of my skills are rooted in battle-tested ideas from software engineering and design. Grilling is no exception.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">Frederick P. Brooks, in his 2010 book <em>The Design of Design</em>, talks about an idea called <strong>The Design Concept</strong>. It isn’t an asset. It’s a fluid understanding of what you’re trying to build, shared by everyone in the design process.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">At the start of any creative process, it’s normal for specifics to be unclear. Even when a product or feature seems clear, you’re working from incomplete information and assumptions. You don’t know what you don’t know.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">Brooks says clarity is best discovered through conversation. The journey itself creates the destination.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">A grilling session closes the same communication gap you’d find between two people or a team. It identifies important decisions early and surfaces hidden assumptions, so you can <strong>build the right thing</strong>.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">The wins multiply when you use grilling as a team. You align your teammates as well as your agent.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/total-typescript/image/upload/c_limit,f_png,q_auto:best,w_1200/v1786674648/ai-hero-launch/crash-course-email-03-theo-grill-me.png" width="480" alt="Theo says Matt’s grill-me skill helps align agents with his brain. In a follow-up, he says the twenty-seventh question clarified what he wanted and helped him cut scope by about ninety percent." style="border:0 none;display:block;height:auto;line-height:100%;outline:none;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;max-width:100%;width:100%;max-width:480px;height:auto;"></p>
<h2 style="font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1em;margin:0;font-size:1.5em;margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#000000;line-height:1.5">Grilling beyond software development</h2>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">Grilling works wonderfully for software, but I’ve been surprised by how often people use it outside software in ways I never imagined.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"><strong>Here are three of the most surprising examples I’ve heard:</strong></p>
<ol style="margin:1em 0;margin-left:1em;padding:0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5;list-style-position:outside !important">
<li style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em">A school teacher used <code>/grill-me</code> in a tool that quizzed students on their essays to find out if they can think as well as they write.</li>
<li style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em">A homeowner used it to think through and weigh priorities for a bathroom renovation.</li>
<li style="padding:0 0 0 1em;margin:0;margin-left:1em">Someone used a grilling session to help him write a eulogy for his mum. The agent interviewed him about his mother and what he wanted to communicate before he sat down to write it.</li>
</ol>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">And a bonus fourth example: I use grilling in my video and course development process. A good session helps me clarify what students need to learn, identify dependencies between lessons, and decide what to prioritize and cut.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">This used to take much more time and many more revisions. Now I can put that time and clarity into the lessons themselves.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">The common thread is this: grilling doesn’t give you answers. It <em>asks you the right questions</em>.</p>
<h2 style="font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1em;margin:0;font-size:1.5em;margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#000000;line-height:1.5">Why grilling works</h2>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">AI can be an amazing tool for outsourcing repetitive work, but the one thing we cannot outsource is our thinking.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"><strong>Grilling goes hard in the opposite direction from most AI trends.</strong> Instead of giving you answers quickly, it asks you to slow down and think critically and creatively, using your own brain and experience.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">It puts you in the driver’s seat. It helps <em>you</em> think through <em>your</em> ideas.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">It surfaces problems before they become problems. It acts as a sounding board and a support structure for deeper thinking.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">An agent never gets tired of digging into the same topic. It doesn’t worry about a question being impolite. It keeps asking until your thoughts are clear.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"><strong>This is the power of wielding agents the right way.</strong></p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">Agents can help you be more creative. They can help you explore the decision space. They can help you surprise yourself.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">You can’t get these results by asking AI for things and hoping it gets them right.</p>
<h2 style="font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1em;margin:0;font-size:1.5em;margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#000000;line-height:1.5">Grilling is just the beginning</h2>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">I’d encourage you to try a grilling session today. Point your agent at <a href="https://7751c435.click.kit-mail3.com/xmu6xnrw77s6hp4rpd3s5h20208k2s233nn5dnwr8zpxq83emml4g235pzprk25q508rdq343logv2kw2kx0q2lq70pknvke6v8w356gvr6oz6n9529gq79qg5wbdd66q/l2heh6ul8xxqxxbgu0/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYWloZXJvLmRldi9zL2NyYXNoLWNvdXJzZS1za2lsbHM=" style="color:#0875c1" url-id="1878136628">my skills</a> and use <code>/grill-me</code> to discuss a feature or project idea.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">If you’re feeling adventurous, try a project that isn’t software, like the examples above.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">If you want to learn what else you can do with this kind of smart alignment, you’re going to love my AI Coding Crash Course.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">Doors open Monday, August 17. Watch for the announcement email.</p>
<p style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5">Matt</p>
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