| name | requirement-convergence |
| description | Separates the outcome a change must produce from the requirements proposed to reach it, records what the user excluded, and bands cost from structure. Use when a requirement enters a workflow, before design begins, or when "how far do we go/what's out of scope/is this worth it" is mentioned. |
Requirement Convergence
Purpose
Requirements arrive bloated, ambiguous, or aimed at the wrong outcome. A capable model reconciles all three into a coherent plan and builds it faithfully — delivering exactly what was asked for when what was asked for was wrong.
This skill converges what to build. How to build it, and which documents the change requires, are settled after the what is.
Convergence Fields
| Field | Pass condition |
|---|
outcome | One observable result. A requirement that does not serve it is excess. |
requirements[] | Every build-relevant item labeled current-state or desired-future. |
nonGoals[] | Authored by the user, or the user stated there are none. |
cost | A band with the structural evidence that places it, plus the unknowns that remain. |
cost is a rough band, not the effort estimate a work plan schedules against; requirements cannot support person-days. Its unknowns carry more decision weight than its size.
Keep request signals classified as evaluation requests, speculative ideas, or prescribed mechanisms in active convergence context as judgment-only candidates. requirements[] and durable documents receive a candidate only after explicit user confirmation.
Each field carries its own readiness label: ready, weak, or weak-but-explicit (weak, and the user agreed to leave it unresolved). Only the user sets weak-but-explicit. Requirements are converged when every applicable field is ready or weak-but-explicit.
Judgment rules per field: references/criteria.md.
Hearing Protocol
The orchestrator owns both elicitation and judgment. It uses the analyzer's scope and cost evidence, then asks only for product choices that the repository cannot answer. Re-run the analyzer only when an answer changes the analysis target or required scope evidence.
Register these steps before starting and record each step's evidence as it completes:
| Step | Action | Completion evidence |
|---|
| 1 | State the scope facts the analysis produced, then separately what they imply for the requirement | Facts listed with the analysis output they came from |
| 2 | Ask about the fields below ready, at most two questions per message | One question per field below ready |
| 3 | Record each answer as that field's value | The value is the option the user selected or the wording the user supplied |
| 4 | Re-ask once when a recorded value still fails its pass condition, then mark the field weak-but-explicit when the user agrees to leave the second answer as it stands | Two recorded answers, or the user's agreement to stop |
| 5 | Judge each field against its pass condition and pass the completed record downstream | A convergence record with every field labeled |
Storage Protocol
| Carrier | Holds | Written by |
|---|
| The orchestrator's convergence record | Every field with its readiness label | Orchestrator |
PRD Success Criteria and Out of Scope | outcome; user-authored nonGoals | The agent that owns the PRD |
Design Doc Requirement Convergence | The same when no PRD exists, and the fields left weak-but-explicit in every case | The agent that owns the Design Doc |
A flow that produces neither document carries the record in its own context to the next step.
Reference Protocol (For Downstream Consumers)
- Read the convergence record from the prompt.
- Treat
nonGoals as excluded from the current change and desired-future requirements as buildable scope. Evaluation requests, speculative ideas, and prescribed mechanisms that were not promoted create no downstream obligation; an accepted ADR may retain evaluated options as decision history.
- Treat a
weak-but-explicit field as a recorded open question rather than a settled decision, and escalate when the work depends on resolving it.
Quality Checklist
References
- references/criteria.md — judgment rules per field, cost inputs, challenge intensity, solution-in-disguise test
