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, come after the what.

Convergence Fields

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.

Classify from the user's own retained wording, not from an analyzer's restatement of it: wording that asks for an evaluation, describes a speculative idea, or suggests a mechanism stays in active convergence context as a judgment-only candidate. requirements[] and durable documents receive a candidate only after explicit user confirmation.

Each field carries a 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

Run the hearing after scope analysis has produced the facts needed to judge the convergence fields. The workflow using this skill owns the interaction method and routing; this skill defines the hearing content and pass conditions.

Register these steps before starting and record each step's evidence as it completes:

Step 2's evidence is what keeps the hearing reviewable: a value restating the hearing's own candidates fails it, so the user's judgment survives however the question was put.

Scope Confirmation

Render this shape at every requirements confirmation stop, whether or not the hearing ran, using only what can change the user's requirement decision or the workflow route.

Keeping the first three sections separate is what makes the decision informable: merged, the reader cannot tell which line is the user's own selection, which is a repository observation, and which is still open.

Only an explicit user answer moves an item from User decisions into User-selected scope. Because Step 2 records the user's own wording, pose each open decision as a question and let the user supply its answer. The orchestrator owns Workflow and presents it as a selected route.

Storage Protocol

A flow that produces neither document carries the record in its own context to the next step.

Reference Protocol (For Downstream Consumers)

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, prescribed mechanisms, and agent-proposed capabilities that were not promoted create no downstream 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. When work depends on it, return the missing decision and its effect to the owning workflow.

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