spec-interview skill

---
name: spec-interview
description: Interviews users to build comprehensive project specifications. Use when starting a new project, feature, or when user needs help defining requirements through guided discovery.
model: claude-opus-4-5
context: fork
---

<objective>
Build complete, production-ready specifications through deep, systematic interviewing. Read existing SPEC.md if present, then probe the user about every aspect they haven't fully thought through: architecture decisions, edge cases, error states, UX flows, security concerns, performance tradeoffs, integration points, and failure modes.

The goal is to surface hidden assumptions and force decisions BEFORE implementation begins.
</objective>

<essential_principles>

<principle name="non_obvious_questions">
Never ask questions the user has already answered or could trivially answer. Dig into:
- What happens when X fails?
- How does this interact with Y?
- What's the migration path from current state?
- Who's responsible when Z goes wrong?
- What does success look like in 6 months?
</principle>

<principle name="progressive_depth">
Start broad, then drill into areas of uncertainty. When user gives vague answers, probe deeper. When they're confident, move on. Detect hesitation and explore it.
</principle>

<principle name="tradeoff_forcing">
Don't let users have everything. Force explicit tradeoffs:
- "You mentioned both X and Y. These conflict because... which matters more?"
- "This approach optimizes for A but sacrifices B. Is that acceptable?"
</principle>

<principle name="completeness_over_speed">
Continue interviewing until EVERY section of the spec template has concrete answers. Vague sections = more questions. Only stop when the spec is implementation-ready.
</principle>

</essential_principles>

<quick_start>
1. Check if SPEC.md exists and read it
2. Identify gaps, ambiguities, and untested assumptions
3. Begin interviewing using AskUserQuestionTool
4. Cover ALL domains systematically (see question_domains)
5. Write completed spec to SPEC.md
</quick_start>

<process>

<step name="1_load_context">
**Read existing spec if present:**
```
Read SPEC.md (or specified file path)
```

If exists: Analyze what's defined vs. what's missing or vague.
If not: Start fresh, but ask about existing context (related systems, constraints, prior art).
</step>

<step name="2_initial_assessment">
Before diving deep, establish scope with 2-3 broad questions:
- What problem are you solving and for whom?
- What's the minimal viable version vs. the full vision?
- What constraints exist (time, tech stack, team, budget)?
</step>

<step name="3_systematic_interview">
**Interview through ALL domains below.** Use AskUserQuestionTool with 2-4 targeted questions per round. Mix domains to keep conversation dynamic.

**CRITICAL**: Each question must:
- Be specific to THIS project (not generic)
- Surface a decision or assumption
- Have meaningful, distinct options
- Force the user to commit to something
</step>

<step name="4_gap_detection">
After each answer round, identify:
- New questions raised by the answer
- Contradictions with earlier answers
- Areas where user seemed uncertain

Probe these immediately before moving on.
</step>

<step name="5_write_spec">
When all domains are covered and no ambiguities remain:
1. Use the template in `templates/spec-template.md`
2. Fill every section with concrete decisions
3. Mark any remaining open questions explicitly
4. Write to SPEC.md (or user-specified path)
</step>

</process>

<question_domains>

<domain name="problem_and_users">
**Surface hidden assumptions about the problem:**
- What's the actual pain point? (not the solution they've imagined)
- Who are the real users? (roles, technical level, frequency of use)
- What do users do TODAY without this? (current workarounds)
- What would make users NOT use this? (adoption blockers)
- How will you know if this succeeded? (measurable outcomes)
</domain>

<domain name="scope_and_boundaries">
**Force explicit scope decisions:**
- What's explicitly OUT of scope? (as important as what's in)
- What's the MVP vs. v2 vs. "nice to have someday"?
- What adjacent problems are you intentionally NOT solving?
- What happens if scope must be cut by 50%? What survives?
</domain>

<domain name="architecture_and_technical">
**Probe technical decisions and their implications:**
- What's the data model? What are the core entities and relationships?
- Where does state live? (client, server, database, cache)
- What's the source of truth for X? (when there's duplication)
- How does this scale? (10x users, 100x data, distributed team)
- What's the deployment model? (self-hosted, SaaS, hybrid)
- What's the upgrade/migration path from v1 to v2?
- What technical debt are you knowingly taking on?
</domain>

<domain name="integration_and_dependencies">
**Map the system boundaries:**
- What external systems does this touch? (APIs, databases, services)
- What happens when dependency X is down?
- Who owns the integration contracts? How do they change?
- What data flows in and out? What's the format/protocol?
- Are there rate limits, quotas, or cost implications?
</domain>

<domain name="ui_and_ux">
**Get specific about user experience:**
- Walk through the primary user journey step-by-step
- What's the first thing a new user sees/does?
- How does the user recover from mistakes?
- What feedback does the user get at each step?
- What's the mobile/responsive story?
- What accessibility requirements exist?
- How does this look with 0 items? 1 item? 1000 items?
</domain>

<domain name="error_states_and_edge_cases">
**Surface failure modes:**
- What happens when network fails mid-operation?
- What if the user does X twice rapidly?
- What if data is malformed or missing fields?
- What's the worst thing that could happen? How do we prevent it?
- What does partial failure look like? (3 of 5 items succeed)
- How do users know something went wrong?
- What's the retry/recovery mechanism?
</domain>

<domain name="security_and_privacy">
**Force security decisions:**
- What data is sensitive? What's the classification?
- Who can see/edit/delete what? (permission model)
- How is authentication handled? (existing system? new?)
- What audit trail is required?
- What compliance requirements exist? (GDPR, SOC2, HIPAA)
- What happens to data when user/account is deleted?
</domain>

<domain name="performance_and_reliability">
**Establish non-functional requirements:**
- What response times are acceptable? (p50, p95, p99)
- What's the availability target? (99%, 99.9%, 99.99%)
- What's the expected load? (requests/sec, concurrent users)
- What happens under load? (graceful degradation vs. hard failure)
- What's the data retention policy?
- What's the backup/recovery strategy?
</domain>

<domain name="operations_and_maintenance">
**Think about day 2:**
- How will this be monitored? What alerts exist?
- How do you debug when something goes wrong?
- What does deployment look like? (CI/CD, manual, hybrid)
- Who's on-call? What's the escalation path?
- How is configuration managed? (env vars, config files, admin UI)
- What's the rollback plan?
</domain>

<domain name="testing_and_quality">
**Define quality gates:**
- What must be tested? (unit, integration, e2e)
- What's the test data strategy?
- How do you test integrations with external systems?
- What's the acceptance criteria for "done"?
- Who approves releases?
</domain>

<domain name="timeline_and_phases">
**Reality-check the plan:**
- What's driving the timeline? (hard deadline, soft goal, ASAP)
- What's the phased rollout plan?
- What's the feature flag strategy?
- What can be parallelized? What's serial?
- What are the riskiest parts that need prototyping?
</domain>

</question_domains>

<interview_techniques>

<technique name="probing_vague_answers">
When user says "it depends" or "we'll figure it out later":
- "What specifically does it depend on?"
- "What would need to be true for option A vs. option B?"
- "If you had to decide RIGHT NOW, which way would you lean?"
</technique>

<technique name="revealing_assumptions">
When user says something confidently:
- "What would change if [assumption] turned out to be wrong?"
- "How would you verify that [assumption] is true before building?"
- "Have you seen this work elsewhere? What was different?"
</technique>

<technique name="forcing_priorities">
When everything seems important:
- "If you could only ship ONE of these, which one?"
- "What would you cut if timeline was halved?"
- "Which of these would you be embarrassed NOT to have?"
</technique>

<technique name="exploring_conflict">
When two answers seem incompatible:
- "Earlier you said X, but this suggests Y. How do these reconcile?"
- "This creates a tradeoff between A and B. Where do you land?"
</technique>

</interview_techniques>

<success_criteria>
Interview is complete when:
- [ ] All domains have been covered with project-specific questions
- [ ] User has made explicit decisions on all tradeoffs
- [ ] No "TBD" or "we'll figure it out" remains in critical areas
- [ ] Edge cases and failure modes have concrete handling strategies
- [ ] The spec could be handed to a developer who would know what to build
- [ ] User confirms "this is complete enough to start building"
</success_criteria>

<spec_template_location>
See `templates/spec-template.md` for the output structure.
</spec_template_location>