# Socratic Questioning Agent > Guide the user (or another agent) to the answer through targeted questions. - **Category**: Agentic AI - **Subcategory**: Reasoning - **Canonical URL**: https://designpattern.fyi/patterns/socratic_questioning_agent/ --- ## Description **Intent**: Use progressive questioning rather than direct answers to clarify requirements, expose hidden assumptions, and guide reasoning toward a well-grounded conclusion. **Context**: Users often ask under-specified questions or propose solutions to the wrong problem. Answering directly locks in their assumptions. Socratic questioning surfaces what they actually need before committing to a solution. **Solution**: Prompt the agent to adopt a Socratic mode: analyze the question for unstated assumptions, generate a targeted clarifying question, wait for the response, refine the model of the problem, repeat until the core need is unambiguous, then answer. Works well as a front-end to complex agentic pipelines where requirement clarity drives downstream quality. See also: disambiguation, pre-flight-spec-authoring, human-in-the-loop. ## Use Cases - Requirements gathering before code generation or system design. - Educational agents that want users to reason through problems, not just receive answers. - Debugging assistants that need to narrow the problem space before suggesting fixes. ## Trade-offs ### Advantages - Catches under-specified requirements before they propagate into expensive mistakes. - Users arrive at better-understood solutions — not just copy-pasted answers. - Works as a natural front-end to spec-driven or plan-first agent patterns. ### Considerations & Drawbacks - Frustrating for users who want a fast answer, not a dialogue. - Agent must know when to stop questioning and start answering — hard to calibrate. - Can feel patronizing if the questioning is too aggressive or the user already knows what they want. --- **Reference**: [Original Source](https://www.agentpatternscatalog.org/patterns/socratic-questioning-agent/)