Design Consultation with Gemini

Tools

ask-gemini

{
  "prompt": "I'm designing [system]. Current approach: [desc]. Trade-offs and alternatives?",
  "model": "gemini-2.5-pro"
}

Options: changeMode: true for structured edits, sandbox: true for code execution

brainstorm

{
  "prompt": "How might we [challenge]?",
  "domain": "software",
  "methodology": "auto",
  "ideaCount": 10
}

Methodologies: divergent, convergent, scamper, design-thinking, lateral, auto

Gotchas

• Gemini brainstorm output is non-deterministic — same prompt rerun gives different ideas; save outputs you want to reference.
• ask-gemini doesn't preserve conversation context across calls — multi-turn questions need explicit history concatenation in each prompt.
• API quota is per-project per-day — bursting on a free tier locks the project out until midnight Pacific.
• Output is markdown but can include LaTeX math — downstream tooling that doesn't render math gets garbled output without warning.
• brainstorm defaults to 5 ideas — for divergent ideation, explicitly request more; the default is a hard cap.