How to use the Grill Me agent skill: setup and examples

What is an agent skill and what does grill-me do?

An agent skill is a folder of instructions that an AI agent can load when a task calls for it. The skill's main file is SKILL.md, which holds the name, a short description, and the instructions the agent follows.

The grill-me skill is described as a relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design. Its purpose is to question you persistently about a plan you have, so that gaps and assumptions surface before you commit to building. It suits feature plans, architecture plans, strategy, and design docs.

• Developers reviewing a feature or architecture plan before writing code
• Founders or product people stress-testing a strategy
• Anyone preparing a design doc who wants likely objections raised early

What is inside the grill-me skill?

The package contains two files: SKILL.md and agents/openai.yaml. The SKILL.md body is very short. It tells the agent to call the Skill tool with the word "grilling".

This matters. The actual interview behaviour comes from a separate skill or tool named "grilling", which is not included in the provided files. Grill-me on its own does not contain the interview logic.

• SKILL.md: frontmatter with the name grill-me, the description, and disable-model-invocation set to true
• agents/openai.yaml: a second file included in the package
• No scripts are included, and the skill does not use the network

Install grill-me with a ZIP download

Download the ZIP of the skill from the page where you found it. Unzip it into one of two locations, depending on how you want to use it.

For a personal install that works across your projects, unzip it into ~/.claude/skills/. For a project-specific install, unzip it into the .claude/skills/ folder inside that project. Either way, the skill folder should sit inside the skills directory so the agent can find SKILL.md.

If you use the Claude apps instead, you can upload the skill under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

• Personal: ~/.claude/skills/
• Project only: .claude/skills/ inside your project folder
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills, then upload

Make sure the grilling skill is available

Before you rely on grill-me, confirm that a skill or tool named "grilling" is installed and available to your agent. The grill-me file only tells the agent to call it. Without it, the agent may be unable to run the interview.

If the agent reports that it cannot find grilling, or it skips the questioning and just answers, the dependency is probably missing. Install or enable the grilling skill and try again.

• Check that the grilling skill is installed alongside grill-me
• If the interview does not start, treat missing grilling as the first thing to check

How to trigger grill-me with a natural request

The source does not list exact trigger phrases. The skill's description is "A relentless interview to sharpen a plan or design", so a request that asks the agent to interrogate or stress-test a plan is the closest match to what it is for.

The frontmatter sets disable-model-invocation to true. The source does not explain how this affects automatic use, so do not assume the agent will pick the skill up on its own. Naming the skill or the kind of review you want is the safest approach, and you should check how your agent behaves.

• Name the skill directly, for example: use grill-me on this plan
• Describe the goal, for example: question my design until the weak spots are clear
• Paste the plan or design in the same message so the agent has the material to question

Examples of requests you can make

Give the agent a concrete plan and ask it to be demanding. Clear, specific plans give the questioning more to work with. Vague plans tend to produce vague questions.

Keep your answers honest. The skill is built to be demanding, so if you answer with guesses, the sharpened plan will reflect that.

• Use grill-me on this feature plan for syncing offline data, and push on anything I have not justified
• Interview me about this architecture for a notification service until the assumptions are clear
• Stress-test my go-to-market plan with grill-me and list the objections I should expect
• Use grill-me on this design doc before I share it with the team

Safety notes: scripts and network

Grill-me runs no scripts and uses no network, according to the source. Its files are plain instructions. The main thing to check is the separate grilling dependency, since the interview logic lives there and is not included in this package.

Review any skill you install before you trust it with sensitive plans, and keep confidential details out of prompts unless you are comfortable with where your agent sends them.

• Scripts: none listed
• Network: none listed
• Review the grilling dependency before installing it, because it is not part of this package