Forge idea — e11-forge-idea

Pressure-test a half-formed idea through persona-driven Socratic interrogation — while changing your mind is still cheap — until it hardens into something you can act on with conviction, or dies inexpensively. Both outcomes are wins.

When to use it

• You have an idea (product, feature, process, architecture direction) and unexamined assumptions are the main risk.
• Before a PRFAQ or brief: forge first, formalize second.
• Not for generating many ideas (Discovery) or for polishing a written draft (e11-refine).

How to invoke

[FI] from a menu, or invoke e11-forge-idea ("pressure-test this idea", "stress-test my thinking"). Two details worth knowing:

• Persona-led. If you invoked it from inside an agent session (say, the Analyst), that persona leads the interrogation in voice. Standalone, it resolves personas via its bundled resolve-personas.mjs.
• One question at a time. It presses on weak points and does not let vague claims pass — but offers concrete reframings when you're stuck. Tough love, not tough silence.

Session shape

• The forge probes the idea's load-bearing claims: who it's for, why now, what breaks it, what you're implicitly assuming, what evidence would change your mind.
• Everything appends to a session memlog under the forge output path — interrupted sessions are offered for resume on the next activation (any session whose status isn't complete).
• The artifact is optional. Better thinking is the goal; strengthening, rejecting, or clarifying the idea are all complete outcomes. When the idea is product-shaped and survives, the skill can write forged-idea.md for hand-off to e11-product-brief, e11-prfaq, or e11-prd.

Gotchas

• Don't steer it toward "shall we build it?" — it's explicitly built not to. If you only want validation, you'll be disappointed (that's the point).
• Killing the idea is success. A cheap death here saves an expensive one three phases later.

Customization

.foundry/custom/e11-forge-idea.toml — forge_output_path, run folder pattern, personas, persistent_facts. See Customization.

Source

e11-forge-idea/SKILL.md (with scripts/resolve-personas.mjs)

See also: Discovery · PRFAQ · Phase 1.