spec

name	spec
description	Interrogate a vague ask into a precise, backlog-ready WHAT spec — five-Why, scope/MVP lock, failure-mode enumeration, read-code-first, quantify-everything. Convergent and relentless on one decided direction. Triggers on "spec this out", "turn this into a spec", "what exactly are we building", "sharpen this ask before handoff", and when /office-hours, /loop, or /brainstorm have settled the WHY but the WHAT is still fuzzy.
argument-hint	[vague ask | issue# | rough doc path]

Spec

Ported from gstack spec — the WHAT-interrogation half (five-Why, scope/MVP lock, failure-mode enumeration, read-code-first, quantify-everything). It is the sibling of /plan's HOW-interrogation (both from gstack spec, split WHAT vs HOW). No CE spec engine exists; the CE flavor reaches the lifecycle second-hand via the already-shipped /plan.

/spec interrogates a vague request — round by round — until the WHAT is precise enough that an unfamiliar implementer (or an AI agent) could build it without a single follow-up question. It is friendly but relentless: ambiguity is a bug and it finds it. It quantifies everything, thinks in failure modes, and reads the code before it asks. Its only durable output is a sharp docs/specs/ artifact that routes onward — it never owns the issue and never enters the work thread.

Position in the lifecycle

/spec is OFF-CHAIN, saga-UNTOUCHED, and routed — it sits between exploration and execution. It never enters the work thread and never writes the saga. Its lane, vs its neighbors:

• vs /brainstorm — /brainstorm is divergent exploration that produces a requirements doc across candidate directions. /spec is convergent and relentless on the ONE decided direction: the WHAT is chosen; /spec makes it precise.
• vs /plan — /plan settles the HOW (architecture, approach, KTDs, the implementation register). /spec pins the precise WHAT (who, current behavior, target, scope boundaries, acceptance, failure modes) and stops at the water's edge of design.
• vs /handoff — /handoff is the thin envelope that routes an artifact to mission-control. /spec produces the sharp source that envelope points at.

Routes IN: /office-hours frame-diagnostic (a settled "what exactly are we building" question), /loop, /brainstorm (a convergent ask emerging from divergent exploration), or direct invocation.

Routes OUT: /handoff (-> mission-control -> issue -> /work); /plan (when the WHAT is locked but a HOW must still be settled); an optional /doc-review readiness pass before handoff.

Resolve any cross-command route through the lifecycle routing reference at saga/skills/loop/references/dispatch-table.md (referenced by path; do not copy the routing table here).

Core principles

1. Refuse ambiguity — the HARD GATE. Do NOT produce a spec artifact after message 1. Interrogate first. The user's opening message is their initial request; begin Phase 1 immediately — do not ask them to repeat themselves, and do not skip ahead to a draft.
2. Lock what + why before how. Run the five-Why, then lock scope. Push back on premature solutions ("before we talk about how, let's lock what and why") and on scope creep ("that's a separate issue — let's finish this one"). Two rounds of pushback per question, then capture and move on.
3. Read code before asking — cite path:line. Before ANY Phase-3 question you MUST have read real evidence from the codebase (Grep/Glob/Read) and cite path:line. This is the magical moment: the operator sees you grounded in their actual repo, not a generic checklist. The non-code escape: if you searched and found nothing related, say so explicitly ("no code surface — treating as greenfield / non-code") and proceed.
4. Quantify everything. "Several files" is not acceptable — find the exact count. "Improves performance" is not acceptable — state the metric and the target. Think in failure modes: what happens when the input is empty, null, enormous, duplicated, called by the wrong role, or called twice? Enumerate them; an unenumerated failure mode is an unwritten test scenario.
5. Sharpen, don't own the issue. /spec writes a docs/specs/ artifact and routes it; it does not file the SDLC issue — mission-control owns the issue body. It reads the repo but does not mutate it, and it is saga-untouched: no saga.py, no work-thread write.
6. Leave a clean handoff. End on a sharp artifact and a named next command — never a half-locked spec dressed up as ready.

Interaction method

Follow ../../references/operator-choice.md for routing decisions only—where to route next and which open question to resolve first. Use free-form for the substantive interrogation (the five-Why, scope, technical categories): those answers are inherently narrative and menu options would nudge them. Ask in tight rounds; never silently skip a question.

In a channel session (redis-channel active), inline the choices in your reply text instead, following the canonical channel-inline convention in saga/skills/brainstorm/SKILL.md (do not duplicate its wording here).

Use repo-relative paths in everything you write — absolute paths break portability across worktrees.

---

Phase 0 — Parse the ask, set origin

Parse $ARGUMENTS and set origin for the artifact frontmatter:

• Vague ask (free text) -> origin: direct. Treat the text as the initial request.
• Issue ref (#N or a URL) -> read it read-only with gh issue view <N> and set origin: issue:#N.
• Rough doc path (an upstream docs/brainstorms/*-requirements.md, a docs/ideation/ survivor, or the root STRATEGY.md) -> read it as grounding, set origin: <repo-relative path>. The upstream doc is starting context, not a settled spec — /spec still interrogates the WHAT.

Then begin Phase 1 immediately. Do not draft an artifact in Phase 0.

Phase 1 — Five-Why (the WHAT/WHY lock)

Load references/interrogation.md. This load is non-optional — the anti-hand-waving bar per question lives there. Ask until you can crisply answer all five, and do NOT proceed until all five are answered without hand-waving:

1. Who is affected? (end-user role, automated system, internal team — "just me, solo dev" is fine.)
2. What is the current behavior? (what IS happening — verified, not assumed.)
3. What should the behavior be instead?
4. Why now? (blocking other work? costing money? correctness bug? compliance risk?)
5. How will we know it's done? (an observable, measurable done-signal — not vibes.)

Phase 2 — Scope lock + failure-mode register

Lock the boundary early; it prevents creep later. Answer all five:

1. What is explicitly out of scope? Lock this first.
2. What existing systems does this touch? Files, tables, services, endpoints.
3. Ordering constraints? Must A happen before B?
4. The MVP cut — the smallest version that delivers the value (surface it even if you don't take it).
5. Failure modes + rollback — the native gstack failure-mode register: enumerate what breaks if shipped wrong, and how to undo. Do not proceed until scope is locked.

Phase 3 — Technical interrogation (HARD: read code first)

Mandatory: before asking ANY Phase-3 question, read at least one piece of real-code evidence and cite path:line. Map the request to evidence yourself — do not ask "what file should I look at?" first. The non-code escape applies when there genuinely is no code surface ("no code surface — treating as greenfield / non-code") — then proceed. Then ask about whichever of the six categories apply (skip ones that clearly don't): data model · API · background processing · UI · infrastructure · testing. Don't ask what the code already answers.

Phase 4 — Draft review

Present a full draft and ask: "Does this accurately capture what you want? What did I get wrong?" Iterate until the user confirms.

Phase 5 — Write, optional readiness pass, route

Read references/spec-template.md and write the artifact to docs/specs/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>-spec.md. Run the post-write checklist in the template before confirming. Then:

• OFFER an optional readiness pass on the spec before handoff (do not auto-run it). Two complementary options, offer either or both:
  • Spec-phase rubric pass — run the SPEC-phase rubrics against the draft via the engine at ../../scripts/lifecycle_review.py (rubrics under saga/references/rubrics/spec/). List with python3 ../../scripts/lifecycle_review.py rubrics list-cores --phase spec (+ list-extras), read each with rubrics read --phase spec --slug <slug>, apply every core rubric and the fitting extras by judgment. This is the WHAT-rigor readiness check; do not add a new command.
  • /doc-review pass — hand the spec to /doc-review for the broader readiness-skeptic review.
• Route onward: /handoff (-> mission-control -> issue -> /work) when the WHAT is locked and ready for the backlog; /plan when a HOW must still be settled; or stop if the user is done.
• No saga write. /spec is off-chain; it does not advance or mint any work thread.

Hard boundary

/spec interrogates and sharpens the WHAT. It never commits, pushes, opens or merges PRs, or deploys. It does NOT file an SDLC issue (mission-control owns issue creation) — it produces the source artifact only. It does NOT write or advance the saga (no saga.py, no --lifecycle-phase) — it runs off-chain. It does NOT do /plan's HOW job (architecture, KTDs, the implementation register) nor /brainstorm's divergent exploration job. It reads the repo but does not mutate it.

Reference files

• references/interrogation.md — the WHAT-altitude procedure: the five-Why with an anti-hand-waving bar per question; the scope-lock five; read-code-first (mandatory-evidence rule, request->evidence mapping, cite path:line, the six categories, the non-code escape); the native failure-mode register; quantify-everything; and the anti-patterns catalog. The HOW-altitude sibling lives in saga/skills/plan/references/interrogation.md and is deliberately not duplicated here.
• references/spec-template.md — the locked docs/specs/ artifact: frontmatter + sections, the post-write checklist, and the /handoff routing note (the artifact is a /handoff source mapping to requirements-ready; mission-control owns the issue body).
• saga/references/formatting-style.md — the shared formatting contract the written spec follows (one-line section summaries, short blank-separated paragraphs, comparative data as tables/bullets).

Learn more

The WHAT-interrogation rigor — five-Why, quantify-everything, lock scope before solution — comes from gstack spec, itself informed by Garry Tan's "boil the lake" discipline: get the problem exhaustively right before touching the solution.