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

Use the available scope and cost evidence for both elicitation and judgment, then ask only for product choices that the repository cannot answer. Repeat scope and cost analysis 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 available scope facts, then separately what they imply for the requirement	Facts listed with their analysis evidence
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 finalize the completed record	A convergence record with every field labeled

Storage Protocol

Carrier	Holds
The active convergence record	Every field with its readiness label
PRD Success Criteria and Out of Scope	outcome; user-authored nonGoals
Design Doc Requirement Convergence	The same when no PRD exists, and the fields left weak-but-explicit in every case

When neither document exists, retain the record in the active context.

Reference Protocol

1. Read the convergence record from the prompt.
2. 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 implementation obligation; an accepted ADR may retain evaluated options as decision history.
3. 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