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Generate Improvement Ideas

Ranks grounded, critiqued improvement ideas for a repo before you pick one to develop

Source Download skill
Repository
EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
Stars
25,850
Licence
MIT
Files
15 files

What it does

When you ask for ideas about a project, this skill makes the agent first study the repository, then dispatch several helper sub-agents to gather grounding from the code, past learnings, issue trackers, Slack, and the web. It generates a full candidate list, critiques every idea, and keeps only survivors with explanations for each rejection. The result is a ranked ideation document saved to a docs folder, and it hands off to a separate brainstorming skill for choosing and shaping an idea.

Great for

  • Developers who want grounded, reasoned improvement ideas for an existing codebase
  • Teams triaging which feature or fix to explore next
  • Users who want a written, ranked record of why ideas were kept or rejected

Skip it if

  • Refining an idea you already have, since the skill points you to a brainstorming skill instead (the reason: it is scoped to generating and ranking, not shaping one idea)
  • Judging a single idea already on the table, which another skill covers
  • Non-technical topics without a clear subject, since it asks clarifying questions and may stop (the reason: it needs an identifiable subject to ground ideas)

Try asking

  • “Generate improvement ideas for this repo's onboarding flow”
  • “Give me surprising directions for our CLI tool, output as markdown”
  • “Ideate on performance problems in the API layer, grounded in our issues”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Generate Improvement IdeasInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 15 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    ce-ideate.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip ce-ideate.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip ce-ideate.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Give a focus hint such as a feature area or constraint in the request to narrow the search
  • Choose markdown output with an explicit request if you want a .md file instead of HTML
  • Read the rejection reasons, not just the survivors, to understand the trade-offs

What's inside

  • references/agents/issue-intelligence-analyst.md
  • references/agents/learnings-researcher.md
  • references/agents/slack-researcher.md
  • references/agents/web-researcher.md
  • references/decomposition.md
  • references/divergent-ideation.md
  • references/grounding.md
  • references/html-rendering.md
  • references/ideation-sections.md
  • references/issue-intelligence.md
  • references/markdown-rendering.md
  • references/output-mode.md
  • references/post-ideation-workflow.md
  • references/publishing.md
  • SKILL.md

Redistributed unmodified from EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.