Spec Gathering

What it does

This skill, Spec Gathering, transforms vague task descriptions into actionable, structured requirements through a series of guided questions. It helps clarify user needs and validates those requirements before proceeding with detailed specification writing. The core principle is to ask smart questions and produce validated, structured output for improved clarity and efficiency.

When to use it

• Starting a new feature or project.
• Clarifying ambiguous task descriptions.
• When users provide high-level goals without specifics.
• Before beginning the process of writing detailed specifications.

Key capabilities

• Structured questioning to elicit requirements.
• Identification of affected services and scope based on project context and task description.
• Workflow type determination (feature, refactor, investigation, migration, simple).
• Integration with a "context-compressor" skill for progressive disclosure during clarification.
• Reads project structure files (product.md, tech-stack.md) if they exist to understand the project context.

Example prompts

• "I need to build a new user authentication system."
• "Can you help me clarify the requirements for improving the search functionality?"
• “What would you like to build or fix? Please describe the feature, bug, or change you need.”

Tips & gotchas

• User confirmation of both the task description and workflow type is crucial before proceeding.
• The skill relies on existing project structure files (.claude/context/product.md, .claude/context/tech-stack.md) for context; if these are missing, it will proceed without them.
• This skill focuses solely on requirements gathering and validation – it does not write specifications.