Specification

Establish the task's requirements and implementation boundary from the original intent. Read {workdir}/dispatch.json; intent names the delivered material and its referenced authorities. Read the evidence needed to resolve a question. Write this stage's artifacts under {workdir}. Author directly or delegate focused work, retaining responsibility for the resulting decisions.

Establish or revise the definition

Continue from existing artifacts. Use changed inputs, failure records and actual user decisions to scope work; absence of caused_by does not imply a first delivery. Preserve unaffected content and stable requirement IDs. Read an upstream request's evidence before accepting its attribution.

Produce the requirements ledger using ledger-task-contract.md and the boundary using decompose-task-contract.md. design.md records design choices and joint obligations; the RTL author decides the module split. The boundary sidecars are manifest.json, clocks.json and top-io.json; their formats are in the corresponding reference schemas.

Check the ledger:

python3 <skill>/scripts/spec/__main__.py check-ledger --workdir {workdir}

<skill> is this skill's directory. The output shows unresolved/unassignable, outside-scope and rows requiring decisions, plus numerical targets. Resolve these according to the task and actual authorization. Explain choices requiring a human decision before seeking it; act within an existing delegation when permitted. Record material decisions and their basis in spec-review/decisions.md, identifying who decided and under what authorization. An agent decision is not a user quotation.

Distinguish a mistaken transcription or design assumption from a proposed change to acceptance. Correct the former from source evidence. A genuine acceptance change needs authorization and a clear account of what is no longer being claimed. Neither an approval nor a decision record proves reachability, physical feasibility or successful verification. Investigate factual questions or return them to the responsible stage rather than redefining a requirement to make a result pass.

Complete and review

Use check-hints-task-contract.md to describe the observations used by simulation. Check the ledger/boundary/hint references and derive constraints:

python3 <skill>/scripts/spec/__main__.py check-crossrefs --workdir {workdir}
python3 <skill>/scripts/spec/__main__.py derive-constraints --workdir {workdir}

These checks identify inconsistent references and invalid tool inputs; they do not establish the truth of an engineering assumption. Repair the side that is wrong based on evidence.

Have the complete delivery independently reviewed using review-task-contract.md. Assess findings against their sources, repair defects, and recheck affected artifacts. Have substantive changes reassessed. Retain the review and material decisions; assess acceptance impact independently of a finding's label. Present design.md, review paths and any unresolved decision to the user as needed.

Close

Finalize when this stage's work is complete or an unresolved issue must return to the caller:

python3 <skill>/scripts/spec/__main__.py finalize --workdir {workdir} \
  [--fail-reason "<unresolved cause and evidence>"]

Finalize checks current references, derives constraints, validates the ledger and rejects unresolved unassignable rows. It does not adjudicate review prose. Supply --fail-reason for an unresolved blocking issue or incomplete review; stage_specific.fail_reason carries that cause.

Exit 0 means result.json was written, pass or fail; return STATUS: DONE and let the caller route it. A nonzero exit means closure failed; resolve the cause or return STATUS: BLOCKED <cause>.