Clarification Strategies

Ambiguity Audit Patterns

Patterns to identify weak requirements in spec.md:

1. The "Adverb Trap"

Pattern: "quickly", "easily", "efficiently", "seamlessly". Critique: "Define 'quickly'. <200ms? <1s? Define 'easily'. How many clicks?" Goal: Convert subjective adverbs to measurable metrics.

2. The Passive Voice

Pattern: "The user is notified..." / "The data is processed..." Critique: "WHO notifies? Email? SMS? Toast? WHAT processes? Background job? Synchronous call?" Goal: Identify specific actor and mechanism.

3. The "Unspecified Scale"

Pattern: "Handle user uploads" without size limits. Critique: "Max file size? Allowed types? Expected concurrency?" Goal: Define boundary constraints for Plan phase.

4. The "Missing Failure Mode"

Pattern: "User logs in successfully." Critique: "Wrong password? Locked account? DB down?" Goal: Ensure error paths defined in User Scenarios.

5. The "Scope Creep" Detector

Pattern: "Integration with 3rd party providers" (plural) when one suffices for MVP. Critique: "Which specific providers for V1? Can we limit to one?" Goal: Narrow scope, reduce complexity.

Questioning Protocol

When generating questions:

1. Group by Impact: Security > Scope > UX > Technical.
2. Propose a Default: "Should we default to JWT for auth, or do you have a specific requirement?"
3. Limit Volume: Max 8 critical questions at a time.
4. Reference Lines: Point to specific line in spec.md where ambiguity exists.

Adversarial Stress-Test Patterns

Patterns to detect internal contradictions and constraint violations in resolved specs. Run after collaborative ambiguity questions are answered — the goal shifts from "what did you mean?" to "what breaks if you meant exactly that?"

1. Cross-Requirement Contradiction

Signal: Two requirement or success-criteria IDs impose mutually exclusive constraints. Heuristic: Pair-wise comparison of quantified constraints across all FR-###, TR-###, OR-###, SC-### entries — flag pairs whose stated bounds conflict at any scale within the spec's defined scope. Example: "FR-002 mandates real-time sync, but TR-001 caps round-trip latency at 50 ms — under a 10,000-item payload, one of these must yield. Which one relaxes, and under what threshold?"

2. Constraint Impossibility

Signal: An acceptance, validation, or verification criterion is unachievable given stated constraints. Heuristic: For each SC, check that the combined constraint set (performance, uptime, scope exclusions, deployment model) has a feasible solution. Example: "SC-003 requires 99.99% uptime (US3), but OR-001 specifies zero-downtime deploys with no blue/green or canary strategy in scope — how is the 4.3 min/year error budget preserved during releases?"

3. Concurrent-Trigger Ambiguity

Signal: Two or more work items can fire simultaneously with no defined priority or conflict resolution. Heuristic: Identify US/OBJ pairs sharing an actor or trigger context; flag when the spec defines no ordering, mutual exclusion, or conflict-resolution rule. Example: "If a user triggers FR-001 (bulk import) and FR-004 (real-time validation) on the same dataset at the same instant, which operation wins? Is the import atomic or row-level?"

4. Boundary/Scale Stress

Signal: Stated limits are never tested at their extremes, or no limit is stated at all. Heuristic: For every quantified constraint, check for 0, max, and max+1 test scenarios; for every unconstrained resource (file size, concurrency, payload count), flag the absence of a bound. Example: "US-002 says 'handle user uploads' — what happens at 0 bytes? At the max-size boundary? At max-size + 1 byte? What is the max concurrency?"

Adversarial Scoring Protocol

When scoring adversarial findings:

1. Severity: Use the ambient AGENTS.md §Artifact Conventions definitions — CRITICAL (blocks baseline, violates instructions), HIGH (conflicting requirements, untestable criteria), MEDIUM (missing edge case, underspecified boundary).
2. Blast Radius: Count the number of distinct IDs (FR-###, TR-###, OR-###, SC-###, US#, OBJ#) affected by the finding.
3. Rank: Sort by severity × blast_radius (CRITICAL=3, HIGH=2, MEDIUM=1).
4. Cap: Return at most 5 findings per pass. Drop lowest-ranked findings beyond the cap.