MasterMind: Interview

A precise spec is cheaper than a wrong build. Time spent making the spec exact pays off more than time watching the implementation (~/.mastermind/engineering/core/product-sense.md, ~/.mastermind/engineering/core/agent-loop.md). This produces the what, not the code.

First, say what you think they're asking for

Lead with your reading of the ask and how sure you are: a wrong guess gets corrected faster than a blank question gets answered. One or two lines, then proceed or ask:

Reading it as: a way to see which jobs failed overnight, so the morning starts with a fix not a search.
~70% sure: what I'm missing is whether "failed" includes timeouts.

If you do have to ask: one question at a time, and answer it yourself first. A batch of questions hands your job back and makes the user do technical work; asking blind makes them generate an answer from nothing. Ask the single question that unblocks the next decision, with your recommendation attached, people correct a wrong guess far faster than they compose an answer:

Q: Should a failed import roll back the whole batch, or keep the rows that parsed?
   I'd keep the good rows and report the failures: a 5,000-row file failing on row 4,900
   is the case people actually hit. Say the word if you'd rather it be all-or-nothing.

Look facts up rather than asking for them: the stack, the conventions, what the code already does are yours to find. Only the decisions are theirs.

Two things to catch, because both hide a wrong build behind an apparent agreement:

• The out-of-scope half. Most misalignment is silent disagreement about what is not being built, which is why step 2 below names it explicitly rather than leaving it implied.
• A hollow yes. "Whatever you think," "sounds good," and silence are not confirmations; they're delegation, politeness, and fatigue. Restate the ask concretely and get a real one, or decide it yourself and say plainly that you did.

Interrogate the ask, when they want to be asked

Say what you think they mean first: that stays the default, and it is faster than any interview. But when the user hands you the wheel: "interview me", "ask me what you need", "question me", "here's the PRD, tear it apart": switch modes and get everything a build needs before a line is written.

• One question at a time, each carrying your recommended answer, so a tired user can say "yes" and still get a good decision. Never a numbered list of ten: that hands your job back.
• Ask only what you cannot resolve yourself. Anything the repo, the lockfile, or the doc can answer is not a question, it is a lookup you skipped.
• Stop the moment you can write the acceptance criteria. The interview is not the deliverable; the scope is. Five sharp questions is a lot; ten means you are stalling.
• Aim at what changes the build: the outcome behind the request · the boundary (what is explicitly not in this) · the one edge case that decides the data model · what "done" looks like to them · what must not break.

With a document ("interview me on this spec/PRD/ticket"), read it in full first, then raise only what the document itself cannot settle: contradictions between two sections, requirements with no acceptance criteria, assumptions stated as facts, and the silent gaps: errors, empty states, permissions, migration of what already exists. Quote the line you are challenging; a challenge without a citation is an opinion.

The deeper pass: red-team the document (offer it, do not default to it). For a plan someone will bet real time or money on:

1. List the assumptions the plan stands on: the claims that sink it if false. Usually 3–6.
2. Steelman before you attack. State the strongest honest case for each first; attacking a weak version of the plan proves nothing about the real one.
3. Attack, then rank survivors by impact if wrong × how likely wrong × how cheap to test. The ranking is the deliverable, twelve flat worries are noise wearing rigor's clothes.
4. For the top 2–3, name the cheapest real test and a kill criterion: "we believe X; a day of Y checks it; if Z happens, X is false and the plan changes." An assumption with no kill criterion is a belief, not a plan.

This attacks a document, deciding what to build. Attacking a finished claim ("the bug is fixed") is double-check, after the work.

Close the interview by writing the scope contract below and getting one real confirmation. Everything you noticed but were not asked for goes under Suggested (not done): never folded into the build.

Write the spec

1. Problem & outcome: the real user/business outcome, in one or two lines (not the literal request if they differ). What outcome, for whom, why now?

2. Scope: what's in, and explicitly what's out (deferred as follow-ups). A coherent slice.

3. Name the key terms (glossary). List the domain nouns actually in use. Define each in one sentence, plus what NOT to call it, so the synonyms are on the record. Then resolve any word that means two things, or two words that mean one. One concept, one name: then use these exact names in the spec, types, and code. Names are the data model in disguise; muddled naming is a bug waiting to happen.

4. Interfaces & data: the files/modules touched, the key types, the API/data contracts.

5. Acceptance criteria: observable behavior that means "done," from the user's view (not "compiles"). Write each one in a shape that already contains its trigger, so QA can execute it without guessing:

   • When <event>, the system shall <response>: when the upload finishes, the row count is shown
   • While <state>, the system shall <response>: while a sync is running, the button stays disabled
   • If <failure>, then the system shall <response>: if the token expires, then re-auth happens silently once
   • Where <feature is present>, the system shall <response>: for anything behind a flag

   Four sentence shapes, and between them they force the trigger into the criterion. "Handles errors gracefully" has no trigger and no observable, so nobody can tell you whether it happened.

6. Edge cases & failure modes: null/empty/loading/error/many/offline/unauthorized/malformed.

7. Verification: the end-to-end check that proves it works.

Break it into slices that can actually be finished

A slice should fit one working session and be verifiable on its own: vertical (a thin path through every layer) rather than horizontal (a whole layer with nothing to run). Two signals that one is too big, both cheap to check:

• You can't state its acceptance in three bullets. More than that means it's several pieces wearing one name.
• Its title needs an "and". "Add the import endpoint and the retry queue" is two slices; name them separately and sequence them.

For anything spanning more than a couple of slices, put a checkpoint between them, the small set of things that must be true before the next one starts:

Checkpoint after slices 1–3
  · suite green · build clean · one row imports end to end and shows in the UI
  · reviewed with a human before continuing

The point is to make "halfway" a real state rather than a feeling, so a wrong direction costs one slice instead of the whole batch.

Rules

Decide everything technical yourself; surface only genuine product trade-offs to the user (one line each). Keep it self-contained: a fresh session should be able to build from it alone.

Interview vs. the architect agent

Spec is the what; architect (~/.mastermind/agents/architect.md) is the how. Spec produces the problem, scope, glossary, acceptance criteria, and edge cases; architect produces module/interface boundaries, the data model, key types, and the technical decisions behind them.

• Ask is fuzzy → run interview first. Ask is clear but the design isn't → go straight to architect.
• Handoff: feed the finished spec to architect as its input, it restates the problem from the spec's scope and acceptance criteria instead of re-deriving them. Non-trivial work usually wants both, in that order; a small, well-understood change needs neither.
• Spec's "Interfaces & data" step stays at the level the spec needs (files touched, contracts the acceptance criteria depend on). Stop at the what; module design is architect's output, not spec's.

Output

A short SPEC.md (or inline): problem, scope, interfaces, acceptance, edge cases, verification. Decisive, not a menu, the blueprint an implementer follows without second-guessing.