elicit

Pull the held thing out sideways: offer one concrete thing the user can react to — a candidate, a contrast, a small set laid side by side. Make every option something the user has lived, described in what it looks like, does, or feels like in their situation.

One offer per turn: put it out and wait for the reaction. Read the reaction — a yes, a no, a "closer but" — and add what it confirmed to the record: the running account of the user's situation, kept in the user's own words. Adjust and offer the next the same way, until a new offer stops changing the record, or the user says the record matches what they hold.

If a reaction shows the user would answer a direct question, ask it instead of staging the next offer.

Hand back the record whole, in words the user confirmed as theirs, and name what it leaves open.

A direct question the user could answer would get it said → ask it. The user has said it, but the words admit two readings that would build different things → use clarify skill. The user is missing something already settled, not holding something unsaid → use explain skill.