Elicit Requirements — Structured Pre-Feature Clarification

Run this before writing any new feature to avoid scope creep, missed edge cases, and mid-implementation discoveries that force rewrites.

Elicitation Workflow

Work through these sections with the user. Ask grouped questions — do not ask one at a time.

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1. Problem Statement

Ask:

• What problem are we solving, and for whom?
• What triggers this feature? (user action, external system push, scheduled job, webhook)
• What is the expected outcome when it works correctly?
• What is the expected behaviour when it fails?

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2. User Roles and Stakeholders

Ask:

• Which user roles interact with this directly? (admin, developer, end user, external system)
• Which roles are indirectly affected? (e.g., reports they see change, notifications they receive)
• For integration features: which external system is involved? (identify from project context or ask)

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3. Technical Constraints

For integration or API features, always clarify:

Constraint	Questions
System	Which external system?
Direction	INBOUND (system pushes to us) or OUTBOUND (we push to system)?
Trigger	API call, webhook, scheduled job, file arrival?
Data format	JSON? XML? CSV? Other?
Auth	JWT? API key? mTLS? None (internal only)?
Error handling	Retry? Dead-letter queue? Alert? Silent fail?
Idempotency	Must duplicate calls be safe?

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4. Acceptance Criteria

For each piece of functionality, define:

• What HTTP endpoint (method + path) if applicable
• What the success response looks like (status code, key fields)
• What DB rows are created/updated and with which values
• What external calls are made (APIs, storage, queues)
• What happens on error (validation fail, external system down, duplicate)

Acceptance criteria must be verifiable without human judgement. If it says "looks good" or "works correctly" it is not an acceptance criterion.

Good:

POST /api/v1/orders returns 202 with { "jobId": "<uuid>" } and creates job row with status='PENDING'

Bad: "The endpoint should handle the data correctly"

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5. Out of Scope

Explicitly list what is NOT included in this feature to prevent scope creep:

• Which related endpoints are deferred?
• Which error scenarios are explicitly not handled yet?
• Which UI/dashboard elements are not part of this backend feature?

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6. Dependencies and Ordering

• Does this feature depend on another feature being complete first?
• Does another feature depend on this being complete?
• What environment is needed to test? (running dev server, specific DB records, external system mock?)

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Output

After elicitation, produce a structured summary:

## Requirements Summary: [Feature Name]

### Problem
[1-2 sentences]

### Scope
- System: [external system if applicable]
- Direction: [inbound/outbound]
- Trigger: [how it starts]

### Stories (ordered by dependency)
1. [Story 1 title] — [one-line description]
2. [Story 2 title] — [one-line description]

### Acceptance Criteria (per story)
**Story 1:**
- ...

### Out of Scope
- ...

### Open Questions
- ...

Then save the requirements to a structured markdown file the user can reference during implementation.