Operator Interview

Elicits a specification from a human operator and writes it as a type=spec note in the host's Obsidian vault. The interview applies the shared doctrine — question taxonomy, ask-vs-default-by-reversibility, adaptive depth, stop conditions, and the sign-off protocol — and is a thin executor of it.

This skill separates what/why from how: it produces a spec (problem, decisions, requirements, acceptance criteria), not a plan. Planning is downstream (planning-workflow) over a signed-off spec.

Doctrine

The interview rules live in one place — load them at interview time, do not inline:

Read(file_path: "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/operator-interview-doctrine/SKILL.md")

If you find yourself about to add an interview rule here, add it to the doctrine instead.

Invocation

/operator-interview <topic>

<topic> seeds the interview subject. If blank, the first context-free question elicits the subject.

Execution

When this skill is invoked:

Step 1 — Load the doctrine (above) and the run operation:

Read(file_path: "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/operator-interview/operations/run-interview.md")

Step 2 — Execute the interview per operations/run-interview.md, applying the doctrine throughout.

Step 3 — Report the created spec note path and its final status.

Operations

Run Interview (Default)

File: operations/run-interview.md When: Operator invokes /operator-interview <topic>.

Quick summary: Ask the context-free questions as prose; run the funnel via AskUserQuestion scoping batches (each option carries a recommended default); probe gaps and mark unknowns [NEEDS CLARIFICATION]; run the bounded clarification gate (cap ~5, writing each answer back before asking the next); stop at ~70% / saturation; play the spec back; obtain explicit sign-off; write the spec note via the obsidian-notes skill and promote status to signed-off.

Output

Creates a spec note at:

<vault>/Notes/<YYYY>/<MM>/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>.md

<vault> is resolved by the obsidian-notes skill from the host config. Frontmatter carries note type/tag spec, status (draft → signed-off), signed_off, and supersedes (when applicable). Build and dispatch consumers gate on status: signed-off.

Integration Points

• Doctrine: operator-interview-doctrine skill — the single home for the question taxonomy, ask-vs-default rule, adaptive-depth rubric, stop conditions, AskUserQuestion batch rules, spec-note schema, and sign-off protocol.
• Obsidian-notes skill: ~/.claude/skills/obsidian-notes/SKILL.md — CLI surface (create, property:set, append) used for the spec-note write, plus the non-blocking failure contract.
• Host config: ~/.claude/hosts/<hostname>.md ## Obsidian section — vault path, CLI binary.
• Downstream: planning-workflow skill consumes a signed-off spec to produce a plan (how).

See Also

• operator-interview-doctrine skill — the doctrine this skill executes.
• obsidian-notes skill — CLI surface for the spec-note write.
• planning-workflow skill — downstream planning over a signed-off spec.