clarify
Clarify — the de-risking gate before planning
A spec written in one sitting always lies a little. It states what the author thought of, and stays silent on everything they didn't — the edge cases, the unstated defaults, the words that mean two things. Those silences don't disappear; they get discovered later, mid-implementation, where they cost ten times as much to fix. Clarify is the gate that drags those silences into the open while they are still cheap.
This is the fourth phase of the rsc SDD chain (constitution → specify → clarify → plan → tasks → analyze → implement → verify → review → ship); the method itself lives in ../sdd/SKILL.md. specify turned a fuzzy intent into a spec; clarify interrogates that spec, asks the user the questions that actually change the build, and writes the answers back so the spec becomes safe to plan from. It produces no new artifact — it sharpens the existing one in place. The line is specify creates, clarify de-risks, plan designs: if you find yourself proposing how to build it, you have left clarify.
Model tier: balanced — this phase ranks and asks the few high-leverage questions, it does not design architecture. Resolve and apply it per ../sdd/references/model-routing.md; routing is off unless models.enabled: true in 02-DOCS/wiki/sdd/config.yaml.
Accompaniment dial. Read the level from 02-DOCS/wiki/harness/user-profile.md (the dial and the 02-DOCS/wiki/ convention are owned by ../harness/SKILL.md). Clarify is question-heavy, so the dial matters here more than almost anywhere — it sets how many questions you ask and how you frame them. With no profile: default to non-technical framing, ask the two gauging questions (technical level + accompaniment) first, then proceed at the stated level.
| Dial | Ask |
|---|---|
| L0 "cavernícola" | ONLY the questions whose answer changes the architecture or scope. Propose safe defaults for everything else and list them tersely as "assumed unless you object". Minimal prose. |
| L1 "breve" | The high-leverage batch, one line of why per question. |
| L2 "explica decisiones" | The batch plus the trade-off behind each option, so the user chooses informed. |
| L3 "acompañamiento total" | Walk the taxonomy out loud, explain what each kind of gap costs if left unresolved, ask broadly (including the medium-leverage questions), and teach the why as you go. Ideal for non-technical users who benefit from seeing the hidden decisions. |