Requirement Convergence

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 item labeled current-state, desired-future, or speculative. speculative is one of these layer labels, not a separate field; "speculative requirements" means the items carrying it. |

| 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.

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

Eliciting requires user interaction, so the orchestrator owns it. It runs after the analysis that produced the scope facts, because the orchestrator investigates nothing itself.

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 | Hand the record to the step that judges the fields | An updated record returned from that step |

Storage Protocol

| Carrier | Holds | Written by |

|---------|-------|------------|

| The convergence record in the judging step's output | Every field with its readiness label | Whichever step judged them |

| PRD Success Criteria and Future / Out of Scope | outcome; nonGoals and speculative requirements with origin user | 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 and speculative requirements as excluded from the current change. A speculative item becomes buildable only after the user promotes it to desired-future.
• 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

• [ ] Scope facts were presented before questions were asked
• [ ] nonGoals came from the user, or the user stated there are none
• [ ] Every applicable field is ready, or weak-but-explicit by the user's agreement

References

• references/criteria.md — judgment rules per field, cost inputs, challenge intensity, solution-in-disguise test