Interview
/flow-next:interview is a deep Q&A pass against an existing spec. It extracts the requirements a conversation glossed over, then writes them back as new acceptance criteria on the same artifact.
Two question banks (business and technical) are selectable via --scope=business|technical|both.
The symmetric interview
Section titled “The symmetric interview”Both passes write to the same spec file. R-IDs are append-only across passes, so a business pass followed by a technical pass produces one continuous chain.
| Pass | Asks about |
|---|---|
| Business | Problem framing, target user, success metrics, MVP scope, what NOT to build, prioritization rationale, business risks, UX expectations. |
| Technical | Architecture, API contracts, data model, edge cases, performance, security boundaries, test strategy. |
/flow-next:interview fn-1 --scope=business/flow-next:interview fn-1 --scope=technical --strategy --docsTeams should keep the passes distinct so product ownership and engineering ownership are both visible in the artifact. Solo developers can collapse them with --scope=both.
No time-budget questions
Section titled “No time-budget questions”From Flow-Next 1.1.5 the business interview no longer asks about deadlines, sprint cadence, or “ship before X”. Two reasons:
- Agents can’t reliably estimate their own work, so any answer is a guess that anchors the rest of the interview.
- Time-pressure framing collapsed interviews into brutal-prioritization debates instead of surfacing requirements.
MVP-scope cuts are still asked, but reframed by feature value instead of clock. The budget envelope question is scoped to infrastructure, vendor, and licensing cost.
Doc-aware behaviors
Section titled “Doc-aware behaviors”The interview integrates with the repo’s existing documents:
- Resolves vocabulary against
GLOSSARY.md. - Surfaces foreign-file references when answers cite paths.
- Flags contradictions with active
STRATEGY.mdtracks. - Writes a decision-record entry when a strategy track is intentionally overridden.
Mark-ready offer
Section titled “Mark-ready offer”After the write-back, when readiness is adopted in the repo (≥1 spec already marked ready) and tracker.readyState is not configured, the interview offers once to mark the refined spec ready for execution. Default is keep-draft — re-read the refined spec on disk before blessing it. The offer applies to flow-spec inputs only (task ids and file paths carry no spec readiness), and refinement never auto-resets a previously-blessed spec — only /flow-next:capture --rewrite does. Non-adopters see no question anywhere; tracker-connected repos set readiness on the board.
Question discipline
Section titled “Question discipline”Each question leads with the recommended option and a confidence tier:
[high]— the agent is confident in the recommendation.[judgment-call]— reasonable people disagree; the user should weigh in.[your-call]— the agent has no view; the user owns the decision.
One question at a time. No silently skipped required questions. The user can skip explicitly, which is recorded on the spec so the gap is visible.
Next step
Section titled “Next step”/flow-next:plan <spec-id>If the interview reveals fundamental ambiguity, return to /flow-next:capture --rewrite or /flow-next:strategy before planning.