to-questionnaire — Turn Unanswerable Decisions into a Questionnaire

Skill Overview

to-questionnaire is a skill that turns a “decision you can’t answer on your own” into a structured questionnaire. You only need to clarify who the questionnaire will be sent to and what information you need back; it will generate a Markdown list of questions that can be handed directly to the recipient to complete.

Use Cases

1. Taking over work in an unfamiliar domain and quickly filling in the background. For example, you may take over a project left by a former colleague or enter a business area you don’t understand. Much of what you need to know exists only in someone else’s head. The skill designs questions around the decision you actually need to make, rather than asking for a vague “project overview.”

2. Cross-departmental or cross-functional collaboration with information asymmetry. A product manager may need to confirm technical constraints with an engineer, an independent developer may need to ask a subject-matter expert about industry norms, or a consultant may need to collect information about a client’s current situation. What these scenarios have in common is that asking good questions starts with understanding what the other person knows and what you need from them.

3. Meeting preparation or asynchronous information gathering. Some information isn’t worth scheduling a dedicated meeting for, but still needs to be clarified. The generated document can be sent as an asynchronous questionnaire or used as a meeting agenda and discussion guide, filled out collaboratively during the conversation.

Core Features

1. Interrogate the sender first, then write the questions. The skill interviews you only about what you can definitely answer: who the questionnaire is for and what you need to get back. It does not ask you to provide business details you cannot answer. Instead, it targets the information gap—what the recipient knows but you do not—which is precisely where the value of the questionnaire lies.

2. Generate a ready-to-complete document with a fixed structure. The output is a Markdown file (to-questionnaire-<slug>.md) containing an explanation of the purpose, the intended respondent and how the answers will be used, a necessary background introduction, instructions for responding (including the deadline and estimated effort), and the main questions grouped by topic. Each question covers a single point rather than combining multiple issues, and includes an answer placeholder directly below it. Where a question could easily be misunderstood, it includes a brief explanation of why it is being asked.

3. Prioritize by importance for one-shot asynchronous use. Questions are ordered from most important to least important because asynchronous questionnaires often provide only one opportunity to collect answers. When there are more than a certain number of questions, they are grouped under ## topic headings. The document always ends with a catch-all question: Is there anything we haven’t asked about that you think we should know?

Frequently Asked Questions

How is it different from tools like Wenjuanxing or Feishu Forms?

They serve different purposes. Online form tools solve the problem of “sending something to many people, collecting responses in bulk, and automatically compiling statistics.” to-questionnaire solves the problem of “asking one specific person about a specific body of knowledge.” Its output is a Markdown document, not an online form for distribution. The emphasis is on the quality of the questions, rather than collection and statistical capabilities.

Will the generated questions be too broad or unprofessional?

The quality of the questions depends on the input you provide. The skill first clarifies two things: who the recipient is (their role, professional background, and relationship to you) and what you absolutely need to get back (the specific decision you need to make or the facts you need to confirm). The more specific these two points are, the more closely the questions will fit the situation. If you only say “help me make a questionnaire” without explaining who it is for or what problem it should solve, the output can naturally only remain generic.

Can I send the questionnaire directly to the recipient?

Yes. It is designed specifically for direct delivery: the document includes a background introduction, so the recipient can understand it even without your context. It also specifies how to respond, the deadline, and the estimated effort, while explicitly allowing partial answers and “I don’t know.” Marking uncertainty is more valuable than simply skipping a question. If an in-person discussion would be more appropriate, the same document can also serve as a meeting guide that you and the recipient complete together.