Interview should read codebase context before asking open questions

[Q00]

Problem

During Socratic interview, the interviewer asks open-ended questions like:

• "Do you already have X set up?"
• "Is there a Y this should be a part of?"

These are questions the agent could answer itself by reading the codebase. This creates unnecessary friction — the user has to manually provide information that's already in the code.

Expected Behavior

The interview should read codebase context first (via Glob/Grep/Read tools), then ask confirmation questions instead of open questions:

Current (bad)	Expected (good)
"Do you have authentication set up?"	"It looks like you have JWT auth in src/auth/. Should I rely on that?"
"Is there a config system?"	"I see config.yaml with a YAML loader in src/config/. Should this be part of that, or something separate?"

Context

• brownfield_context in the seed spec was designed for this, but the interview agent isn't aggressive enough about reading the codebase before asking
• The socratic-interviewer agent should use available tools to scan the project structure and existing patterns before formulating questions
• This is especially important for brownfield projects where most infrastructure decisions are already made

Proposed Approach

1. Pre-interview scan: Before the first question, the interviewer should scan the project (file structure, key config files, existing patterns)
2. Context-aware questions: Transform open questions into confirmation questions when codebase evidence exists
3. Cite evidence: Reference specific files/patterns when asking ("I see X in path/to/file...")

Source

Community feedback from Reddit:

"half the questions were absolutely things it should have checked in the code before asking me" — u/zbignew

"the question could be way smarter: 'it looks like you have X set up: should I rely on that?'" — u/zbignew