Checklists
requirements.md
Specification Quality Checklist: Frozen-baseline toll reduction
Purpose: Validate specification completeness and quality before proceeding to planning Created: 2026-08-18 Feature: spec.md
Content Quality
- ✅ No implementation details (languages, frameworks, APIs)
- ✅ Focused on user value and business needs
- ✅ Written for non-technical stakeholders
- ✅ All mandatory sections completed
Requirement Completeness
- ✅ No [NEEDS CLARIFICATION] markers remain
- ✅ Requirements are testable and unambiguous
- ✅ Requirement types are separated (Functional / Non-Functional / Constraints)
- ✅ IDs are unique across FR-###, NFR-###, and C-### entries
- ✅ All requirement rows include a non-empty Status value
- ✅ Non-functional requirements include measurable thresholds
- ✅ Success criteria are measurable
- ✅ Success criteria are technology-agnostic (no implementation details)
- ✅ All acceptance scenarios are defined
- ✅ Edge cases are identified
- ✅ Scope is clearly bounded
- ✅ Dependencies and assumptions identified
Feature Readiness
- ✅ All functional requirements have clear acceptance criteria
- ✅ User scenarios cover primary flows
- ✅ Feature meets measurable outcomes defined in Success Criteria
- ✅ No implementation details leak into specification
Notes
- Audience caveat (Content Quality): this is internal developer-experience tooling, so the "consumer" is a Spec Kitty maintainer, and the spec's stakeholder framing targets that audience. Gate and baseline names (
test_no_dead_symbols,_baselines.yaml, thefastmarker) are domain vocabulary, not tech-stack/implementation leakage — they are the objects the mission acts on, and the requirements stay at the WHAT/WHY level (behavior of the gate) rather than prescribing HOW to implement the fix. - One deliberately deferred design decision (C-002): the concrete warning-not-hard-fail mechanism for FR-003/FR-004 is left to the plan phase with architect-alphonso input. The spec fixes the required behavior (no hard-fail on legitimate additive growth; growth still surfaced for review), so this is not a
[NEEDS CLARIFICATION]scope gap — it is a HOW decision correctly owned by plan. - All items pass on the first validation iteration. Ready for
/spec-kitty.plan.