Individual skill
clarify
Use when a spec exists and must be de-risked before planning — run the gap checklist over its four ASDD questions and out-of-scope, ask only what changes what gets built (one question at a time, recommendation first), record every other call as an assumption, bake the answers back into the spec. The second half of ASDD stage 2 (Spec), between `specify` (writes the spec) and `plan` (designs the build). NOT the cross-artifact consistency check (that is `analyze`).
skills/clarify/SKILL.md
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SKILL.mdcore · 14,385 bytesevals/README.mddoc · 3,767 bytesevals/cases.yamlasset · 6,141 bytes
Read excerpt
# 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 second half of ASDD stage 2, **Spec** (`../asdd/SKILL.md`): `specify` drafts → **`clarify`** hunts the gaps → answers go into the spec → the human approves. It produces **no new artifact** — it sharpens the existing spec 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 finds and asks the few questions that matter, it does not design architecture. Resolve and apply it per `../asdd/references/model-routing.md`; routing is off unless `models.enabled: true` in `02-DOCS/wiki/sdd/config.yaml`.
**Register.** Read `technical_level` from `02-DOCS/wiki/harness/user-profile.md` (the `02-DOCS/wiki/` convention is owned by `../harness/SKILL.md`). Clarify is question-heavy, so the voice matters here more than almost anywhere. Each question carries one line of *why* and the trade-off behind each option, in the `orient` voice. For a `non-technical` reader, frame each option with an everyday analogy. With no profile: use analogies and ask once "technical or with analogies?".
## Read first — the inputs
Clarify never works blind. Before asking a single question, load:
