Agent skill

Grill Me

by flonat in flonat/flonat-research

Run an interactive one-question-at-a-time oral drill for research defence or active-recall study, escalating around weak answers and ending with a study sheet.

MITAuto-check passedAgent Workflows

Install Grill Me

skills CLI
$ npx skills add flonat/flonat-research --skill grill-me -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install flonat/flonat-research grill-me --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/flonat/flonat-research.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/grill-me .claude/skills/grill-me && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
grill-me
GitHub stars
146
Token cost
~2.8k tokens
SKILL.md length
1,469 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
83
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Run an interactive one-question-at-a-time oral drill for research defence or active-recall study, escalating around weak answers and ending with a study sheet.

  • Works in 4 steps: Ground the material (read-only, silent) → Build the question bank (internal, not… → The drill (interactive, ONE question per… → …
  • The user asks to be grilled
  • SKILL.md covers Two Modes (auto-detected;…, When to Use, When NOT to Use and Arguments, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Grill Me is an agent skill from flonat/flonat-research. Run an interactive one-question-at-a-time oral drill for research defence or active-recall study, escalating around weak answers and ending with a study sheet. Use when the user asks to be grilled, quizzed, or prepared for a viva, job talk, seminar, or exam. Not for a written critique; use $devils-advocate or a review agent.

Its SKILL.md is about 2.8k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Agent Workflows, covering Requirements gathering. The repository describes itself as: Shareable Claude Code + Codex infrastructure for PhD researchers — skills, agents, hooks, and rules for academic workflows. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • The user asks to be grilled
  • Prepared for a viva

Example prompts

  • “/grill-me”

Requirements

  • Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Read, Glob, Grep, Bash(ls*), Bash(cat*), Bash(grep*), Bash(git log*), Write, AskUserQuestion

Workflow steps

4 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Ground the material (read-only, silent)
  2. Build the question bank (internal, not shown)
  3. The drill (interactive, ONE question per turn)
  4. Debrief + study sheet

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit da27600. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:

    • Read
    • Glob
    • Grep
    • Bash(ls*)
    • Bash(cat*)
    • Bash(grep*)
    • Bash(git log*)
    • Write
    • AskUserQuestion

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Grill Me loads about 2.8k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 84 tokens; SKILL.md has 1,469 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~84
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2.8k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from flonat/flonat-research at commit da27600, republished under its MIT licence (© flonat). 1,469 words, ~2,845 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/grill-me/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
grill-me
description
Run an interactive one-question-at-a-time oral drill for research defence or active-recall study, escalating around weak answers and ending with a study sheet. Use when the user asks to be grilled, quizzed, or prepared for a viva, job talk, seminar, or exam. Not for a written critique; use $devils-advocate or a review agent.
allowed-tools
Read, Glob, Grep, Bash(ls*), Bash(cat*), Bash(grep*), Bash(git log*), Write, AskUserQuestion
argument-hint
[paper-path | topic | course-notes | subject] [--reviewer2 | --coach] [--study | --defend] [--rounds N] [--focus <dimension>]

Grill Me — Interactive Oral-Exam Drill

You answer, out loud, one grounded question at a time. This skill plays a skeptical examiner and interrogates you — escalating on weak or evasive answers — then hands you a study sheet of what you fumbled, with model answers. Two flavours: defend your own research, or study a class you're learning.

Two Modes (auto-detected; override with --defend / --study)

DefendStudy
TargetYour own paper / model / proof / research ideaA class, subject, textbook chapter, lecture notes you're learning
GoalRehearse defending your choices under pressureTest + deepen recall and understanding of the material
"Right answer"?No single right answer — you defend a choice; the examiner probes whether it holdsYes — there's an objectively correct answer; wrong answers get corrected
Default personaSkeptical-but-fair examiner (viva/referee)Examiner-Socratic (an examiner who also teaches when you miss)
Prep forViva · job talk · seminar Q&A · referee/rebuttal armourExams · comprehension checks · learning a new field

Auto-detect: if the target is one of the user's own artifacts (a paper-*/ dir, a proof, an atlas topic he authored) → defend. If it's course material / textbook / lecture notes / a subject he's revising → study. When ambiguous, ask once.

Everything below is shared; mode-specific differences are called out inline.

When to Use

  • Defend: preparing for a viva / thesis defense / job talk / seminar Q&A; building referee/rebuttal armour before submission.
  • Study: revising for an exam; checking you actually understand a class, textbook chapter, or a new field — active-recall practice, not passive re-reading.

When NOT to Use

  • You want a written critique of a paper, not a live drill → referee2-reviewer / paper-critic / review-cluster.
  • You want to stress-test an argument in prose → devils-advocate.
  • You want to draft a rebuttal to genuine venue reviews you already have → review-response / strategic-revision --external.
  • You want a passive summary of the material → just ask for one; grill-me is for being tested.

grill-me is the only one where you are the one answering. If you don't want to type answers back and forth, use one of the above.

Arguments

ArgEffect
[target]Paper dir / .tex / .pdf, a proof, an atlas topic, course notes / slides / textbook chapter, or a plain subject name. Default: auto-detect paper-*/paper in CWD.
--defend / --studyForce the mode when auto-detect would guess wrong.
--reviewer2Persona = hostile Reviewer 2 (defend mode).
--coachPersona = supportive coach — challenges but scaffolds a hint toward the answer (great for early study).
--rounds NNumber of primary questions (default 10; follow-ups don't count).
--focus <dim>Concentrate on one dimension (see the tables in Phase 1). Default: spread.

Default run = auto-detected mode, default persona, ~10 questions, all dimensions, drill first then study sheet.

Procedure

Phase 0 — Ground the material (read-only, silent)

Read the target so questions are specific, not quiz-show generic.

  • Defend: read the paper .tex/PDF (or proof/idea). Identify the headline claim, contribution list, load-bearing assumptions, identification/proof spine, positioning vs the nearest rival. Reuse existing review state — don't re-derive it: read reviews/INDEX.md + latest reviews/<scope>/* reports, the project CLAUDE.md risks, and the venue's referee-bait (docs/reference/venue-profiles/<field>.md). A logged referee objection is your sharpest question.
  • Study: read the course notes / slides / textbook chapter / syllabus provided (or, for a named subject with no file, work from the established canonical content of that subject — and say so). Identify the key definitions, mechanisms, results, derivations, and the common misconceptions / exam traps for that topic.

If nothing resolves, ask once (the available structured-question mechanism) what to grill on and at what level (e.g. "undergrad final? qualifying exam? seminar?").

Phase 1 — Build the question bank (internal, not shown)

Rank a bank across the dimensions for the mode. Each question is grounded in the material, tagged by dimension + difficulty, and paired internally with the model answer + the trap (revealed only in the debrief).

Defend dimensions:

DimensionProbing…
Motivation / "so what"Why care? What breaks if you're wrong?
Contribution / noveltyWhat's new vs the nearest rival? One contribution or three?
Model / assumptionsWhich assumption is load-bearing? What happens when you weaken it? Is it stated?
Identification / proofsDoes the design identify the claim? Does each step hold? Counterexample to the general case?
Positioning / venueWhy isn't this subsumed by [rival]? Why this venue?
Robustness / limitsThe most damaging check you didn't run? What would change your mind?

Study dimensions:

DimensionProbing…
Recall / definitionsState the definition/result precisely — no hand-waving.
Mechanism / "why"Why is it true? Explain the intuition, not just the statement.
Derivation / workingWork the step / solve the problem — show the reasoning.
Application / transferApply it to a case you haven't seen; when does it fail?
Connections / compareHow does it relate to [other concept]? What's the difference?
Misconceptions / trapsThe exam trap — the plausible-but-wrong answer, and why it's wrong.

Seed the hardest slots from Phase 0's real material (logged referee issues in defend mode; known exam traps in study mode) before filling with derived questions.

Show full SKILL.md (676 more words)Show less
Phase 2 — The drill (interactive, ONE question per turn)

The drill is turn-by-turn — ask exactly one primary question, then STOP and wait for the answer. Never dump the bank; never answer your own question.

Evaluate each answer silently — does it address the question, is it correct/grounded, or is it a dodge? Then:

  • Weak / wrong / evasive → grill it. Name the gap precisely. In defend mode: press whether the choice holds ("your Assumption 2 lets (g) be bimodal — so why does the peak stay at (\bar\theta)?"). In study mode: the answer is objectively wrong, so probe toward the correct one without handing it over ("not quite — what does the second-order condition require here?"). Push 1–2 follow-ups, then log and move on.
  • Solid → one-line acknowledgement, then next dimension or raise the stakes.
  • Adapt — spend the budget where the defender struggles; skip what they've nailed.
  • Persona = tone, not substance: examiner (rigorous, no free passes), reviewer2 (maximally adversarial), coach (drops a hint toward the answer — best for early study).

Keep a running tally: dimension · verdict (solid / shaky / fumbled / wrong / dodged) · the gap. The defender can say "stop", "skip", "hint", or "move on" anytime.

Never reveal the model answer mid-drill (except a partial hint in coach mode) — recall under pressure is the point. End after --rounds N primaries (default 10) or on "stop".

Phase 3 — Debrief + study sheet

When the drill ends:

  1. Readiness read (qualitative, no gimmick score): e.g. defend — "6 solid / 3 shaky / 1 fumbled — the mechanism is airtight, but contribution-count and identification would draw blood in a viva"; study — "you know the definitions cold but the derivations and application transfer is where you'd lose marks".
  2. Per-dimension summary — armoured vs exposed.
  3. The questions you fumbled / got wrong, each as: the question · why your answer was weak/wrong · the model answer (defend: a strong defense; study: the correct explanation) · the trap · how costly it is (viva-fail / desk-reject / lost-exam-marks).
  4. Prep actions — concrete and specific. Defend: what to add to the paper/talk, the one line to rehearse, the robustness check that kills the question. Study: exactly which sections/concepts to re-review, and the misconceptions to unlearn.
  5. Offer to persist it: write the study sheet to reviews/<scope>/grill-me/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md (defend, scope = paper slug or _project) or notes/grill-me/<subject>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.md (study). Read-only w.r.t. the material — grill-me never edits your paper or notes.

Key Rules

  1. One question per turn — the drill is the product. Batch-dumping is a study sheet, not a grilling.
  2. Ground every question in the material. No generic "what's your contribution?" / "define entropy" — tie it to their paper or their course notes.
  3. Reuse real material first — a logged referee open-issue (defend) or a known exam trap (study) outranks an invented question.
  4. No model answers mid-drill (partial hints only in coach mode). Answers land in Phase 3.
  5. Escalate then release — 1–2 follow-ups, then log and move on; don't grind one point forever.
  6. Honest verdicts, calibrated tone. Don't flatter a thin answer; the persona sets how hard you say it. In study mode, wrong is wrong — correct it kindly but clearly.
  7. Read-only on the material. The only write is the optional study-sheet file.

Anti-Patterns

  • Don't print all 10 questions at once and wait — ask one, stop.
  • Don't reveal the answer while the defender is still trying (recall under pressure is the point).
  • Don't ask ungrounded quiz-show questions they can't map to their paper/class.
  • Don't accept a dodge — name it and re-ask.
  • Don't grill without a debrief — the study sheet is where the value is banked.
  • Don't invent a referee objection when reviews/INDEX.md already records a real one, or a fake exam trap when the notes state the real one.

Cross-References

Skill / AgentRelationship
devils-advocateStress-tests arguments in prose; grill-me makes you defend them live
referee2-reviewer / paper-criticWritten adversarial critique; grill-me seeds its hardest defend-mode questions from their reports
weakness-scannerFinds weak points; grill-me turns them into live questions
review-cluster / pre-submission-reportRun first — their logged open-issues are grill-me's sharpest defend material
course-reading-list / init-project-courseCourse scaffolding; grill-me is the study-mode drill over that material
docs/reference/venue-profiles/<field>.mdVenue referee-bait to seed positioning/venue questions (defend mode)

© flonat, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/grill-me of flonat/flonat-research.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit da27600

Compare with similar skills

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Categories

Questions about Grill Me

What does Grill Me do?

Run an interactive one-question-at-a-time oral drill for research defence or active-recall study, escalating around weak answers and ending with a study sheet. Grill Me is an agent skill from flonat/flonat-research. Run an interactive one-question-at-a-time oral drill for research defence or active-recall study, escalating around weak answers and ending with a study sheet.

When should I use Grill Me?

Grill Me fits situations like: the user asks to be grilled; prepared for a viva.

How do I install Grill Me in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add flonat/flonat-research --skill grill-me -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/grill-me in flonat/flonat-research) into .claude/skills/grill-me in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Grill Me in Codex?

Run `npx skills add flonat/flonat-research --skill grill-me -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/grill-me in flonat/flonat-research) into .agents/skills/grill-me in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Grill Me in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add flonat/flonat-research --skill grill-me -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/grill-me, .gemini/skills/grill-me, .github/skills/grill-me and .opencode/skills/grill-me in your project.

What does Grill Me need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Grill Me is instructions for the agent only. Its frontmatter pre-approves these tools: Read, Glob, Grep, Bash(ls*), Bash(cat*), Bash(grep*), Bash(git log*), Write, AskUserQuestion.

Does Grill Me access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Grill Me safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Grill Me use?

Grill Me is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Grill Me use?

About 2.8k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 11k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Grill Me?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Grill Me: Using Superpowers (farm-fe/farm, 5.6k stars), Interview Me (addyosmani/agent-skills, 103k stars), Grilling (pietheinstrengholt/rssmonster, 564 stars) and Agentic Workflow Designer (dotnet/Open-XML-SDK, 4.6k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Grill Me?

flonat (a GitHub user) maintains it in flonat/flonat-research, which has 146 GitHub stars. The repository holds 83 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 29, 2026.

Source: flonat/flonat-research on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.