Checklists

requirements.md

Specification Quality Checklist: Lifecycle Gate Execution Context and Tool-Artifact Ownership

Purpose: Validate specification completeness and quality before proceeding to planning Created: 2026-07-23 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

Validation Notes

Iteration 1 — all items pass. Two items warranted deliberate judgement rather than a mechanical tick, recorded here so a reviewer can challenge them:

1. "No implementation details" / "Success criteria are technology-agnostic". This is a brownfield remediation of the toolchain itself, so the users are operators and agents running the workflow, and the subject matter is internal structure. The spec keeps requirements stated as observable behaviour ("the preview and the real merge agree", "acceptance is not blocked", "no orphaned write"), and confines structural nouns to the Key Entities section where concepts belong. SC-004 counts exemption mechanisms, which is an internal measure — it is retained because the count is the outcome the mission is accountable for, and stating it as a user-facing proxy would make it unfalsifiable.

2. Scope boundedness under a "retire all eight" decision. The operator explicitly chose full class closure over a partial proof. That is a large blast radius, and the spec carries it as C-001/C-002/C-010 rather than pretending the risk away: sequencing behind in-flight work, fixing the self-blocking defect first, and requiring that retirement preserve any behaviour the exemption got right.

Re-grounding provenance. Every out-of-scope exclusion in the spec is backed by verified state on the mission base rather than issue prose — three of the four originally briefed defects had their stated asks already delivered. Requirements were written only against gaps confirmed live in the code and tracker.

Notes

  • Items marked incomplete require spec updates before /spec-kitty.plan