Added Cast Wide pattern

Author: lexler

documents/patterns/cast-wide.md

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+---
+authors: [lada_kesseler]
+---
+
+# Cast Wide (Pattern)
+
+## Problem
+Don't settle for your first solution. Actively push AI to show you more alternatives.
+
+Your first solution comes from your limited knowledge and is prone to answer injection.
+
+AI is extremely well-read; it knows approaches you've never encountered, entire solution categories you're either not familiar with or not even thinking about.
+
+Settling for first means missing a lot of possible alternatives outside your bubble.
+
+## Pattern
+After discussing your initial approach, deliberately look for blind spots:
+- "What alternative solutions to the same problem might be possible that we haven't even considered?"
+- "What are we not even thinking about?"
+- "What should I be thinking about that I'm not considering at all regarding this problem?"
+- "Can we simplify this?.." -> "Could we go simpler than even that?"
+
+Iterating several times and running several parallel explorations with different coding agents makes it even more powerful.
+
+## Example
+During a hackathon, needed to process emails from external clinics and extract data.
+Asked AI: "How do we read Outlook emails?" Standard answer: Microsoft Graph API with OAuth2 and Azure AD registration. A lot of busywork.
+Pushed for simpler: "What's the simplest way?" → IMAP with basic auth. Better, but still network protocols and parsing.
+Kept pushing: "Even simpler?" → File monitoring emerged: configure Outlook to save emails to a folder, process as files. Zero network complexity. 
+
+Discovered an entire category we hadn't considered: file-based processing instead of API solutions. This made a big difference in time spent setting it up. 
+In the end, contributed to getting the project funding because it freed the team up to focus on important parts.
+The context didn't warrant any more complexity than that, it needed to work on one person's computer.