| name | st-clarify |
| description | Clarify phase of the workflow chain. Uses Opus to analyze the user's request, resolve ambiguities, define scope, and produce a clear task brief before research begins. |
Clarify Phase
Analyze and clarify the user's request before any codebase research.
Instructions
steop state set-phase clarify --mode clarify
Launch the consultant agent (steop:consultant, Opus, read-only tools).
Note: When invoked from st-flow with FLOW MODE, skip the wait-for-confirmation step and return the Task Brief immediately. The instructions below describe standalone behavior.
Step 1: Lightweight Codebase Scan
Before asking questions, do a quick orientation scan to ground the clarification in reality:
Glob for project structure (top-level dirs, key config files)Grep for patterns directly related to the user's request (function names, components, modules mentioned)- Read CLAUDE.md or README if present for project context
This is NOT a full research pass — spend no more than 3-5 tool calls. Just enough to understand the landscape.
Step 2: Clarify
With codebase context in hand, the agent should:
- Parse the user's request and identify the core intent
- Spot ambiguities, missing details, or implicit assumptions
- Define the scope — what's in and what's out
- Ask the user clarifying questions if anything is unclear or under-specified (questions should be informed by what was found in the scan)
- Present alternatives when the request has two or more plausible framings. If the user's concrete request admits multiple concrete interpretations, list them under Open questions and ask which — don't pick silently. Distinct from "unclear" (which is already covered by the existing "ask clarifying questions" guidance).
- Produce a Task Brief once clarity is reached
Task Brief Output
After clarification, present a structured brief:
- Objective — one-sentence statement of what will be done
- Scope — explicit boundaries (what's included, what's excluded)
- Complexity — simple / standard / complex (this guides model selection in later phases)
- Success criteria — 1–3 verifiable bullets; each independently checkable
- Assumptions — anything assumed that wasn't explicitly stated
- Open questions — any remaining questions for the user (if none, state "None")
Wait for the user to confirm or adjust the brief before proceeding to the next phase.
