Trying to create and judge at the same time is why people stare at blank pages — every idea gets killed before it's finished. This enforces the split the best thinkers use: first a pure divergent pass where evaluation is banned and volume/weirdness is the goal, then a clean switch to a ruthless critic that scores, prunes, and keeps only what's strong. Two modes, never mixed.
What This Skill Produces
- A generation pass — many ideas, fast, with no evaluation, ranking, or "but that won't work" allowed; wild and half-formed ideas welcome
- A hard break — an explicit switch of mode, so judgment doesn't leak backward into generation
- A critique pass — a separate, adversarial read that scores each idea, finds the traps, and prunes hard
- The survivors — the few ideas that made it through both, with why they held
Required Inputs
Ask for these if not provided:
- The prompt — what you're generating ideas for
- Roughly how many — a target volume for the generation pass (more than feels comfortable)
- The judging criteria — what "good" means, applied only in the critique pass
- Constraints — real ones (for the critic), not imagined ones (which the generator ignores)
Framework: Two Modes, Never At Once
- Generate with zero judgment. In this pass, evaluation, sorting, and hedging are forbidden. Chase quantity and range; let bad and weird ideas exist — they seed good ones.
- Go past the comfortable stopping point. The first ideas are obvious; keep generating well past where it feels done.
- Make a clean break. Explicitly end generation before any judging — mixing them is the whole problem.
- Switch to ruthless critic. Now evaluate hard: score against the real criteria, find the failure modes, and cut without sentiment.
- Keep only the strong. Surface the survivors and why — and note if a "bad" generated idea sparked a good one.
Output Format
Prompt: [what we're ideating on]
⚡ Generation (no judging) [Many ideas, listed fast — wild ones included, none evaluated.]
— switching modes —
🔪 Critique (ruthless)
| Idea | Score | The trap / why it fails or holds |
|---|
Survivors: [the few worth pursuing + why].
Quality Checks
- The generation pass contains NO evaluation or hedging
- Volume/range is high; it pushes past the obvious ideas
- There's a clean, explicit break between the two modes
- The critique pass is genuinely hard, not gentle
- Survivors are justified against the real criteria
Anti-Patterns
- Judging while generating — "here's an idea, though it probably won't work."
- Too few ideas in the generation pass.
- A soft critique that keeps everything.
- Letting real constraints shut down the generation pass (save them for the critic).
Example Trigger Phrases
- "Help me brainstorm without shutting my own ideas down."
- "I keep editing while I create and get nothing done — separate the two."
- "Do a proper divergent brainstorm, then tear it apart."
- "Generate a ton of options for this, then judge them."
- "Give me quantity first, quality second."