intent

Clarify WHAT before building anything. Every criterion must be testable by a stranger. Clarity over completeness — a partial spec with boolean criteria beats a thorough spec with vague ones.

A brief with invented details is worse than a shorter brief grounded in what the user said — assumptions compound silently downstream.

Workflow

Step 1: Understand

State what you heard in 1-2 sentences. If the task arrives with structured input (proposal, design, specs, task list), extract and validate — don't re-clarify.

Step 2: Close gaps

Loop using AskUserQuestion — up to 3 questions per round, max 8 rounds. At least one question across all rounds should be "what should this NOT do?"

After each round, list remaining unknowns — things you'd have to invent if you wrote the brief right now. If the list is non-empty, ask another round targeting those unknowns. If empty, move to step 3.

Step 3: Echo

Compress to one sentence (≤35 words): deliverable + top constraint.