Scenario

[BLOCKING] Run phases in order; update task tracking before and after each phase. [BLOCKING] Every completed or skipped phase needs concise evidence or a reason.

Quick Summary

Goal: Turn one selected embedded outcome slice, explicit roadmap milestone, framework/library scope, or explicitly accepted isolated change into an adversarial, observable scenario set that exposes data corruption, misleading states, access leaks, and recovery gaps before an implementation plan can be approved.

Summary:

• Resolve the owning decomposition block, explicit roadmap milestone, framework technical scope, or EXEMPT scope and stable plan directory; block when the applicable upstream scope is missing or unapproved. The embedded branch does not require a product roadmap.
• Derive scenarios from the user journey and source-of-truth state, then stress refresh/replay, invalid input, concurrency, deletion, lifecycle, access, partial failure, and evidence hygiene.
• Map every high-impact scenario to an invariant, expected outcome, prevention/detection expectation, and TC/evidence; ask the owner about material choices.
• Write plans/{plan-id}/scenario-analysis.md and mark the Scenario Gate PASS or BLOCKED; /plan cannot cook from a blocked gate, and an EXEMPT plan still needs this artifact.
• Main steps: resolve inputs/branch → reconstruct the selected journey and source of truth → generate adversarial scenarios → resolve owner decisions → write the analysis → run the Scenario Gate → hand off to /plan or record a conditional skip.

Workflow: 0) resolve inputs → 1) reconstruct scope → 2) generate adversarial scenarios → 3) resolve decisions → 4) write artifact → 5) run Scenario Gate → 6) hand off to /plan.

Key Rules:

• Scenarios describe situations and expected outcomes, not framework or database solutions.
• A happy path alone is never sufficient for persistent/stateful work.
• High-impact scenarios without evidence or an owner decision block the plan.
• Never put secrets, real payment data, tokens, or personal data in scenario/evidence artifacts.

Mission

$ARGUMENTS

Required Context

MUST ATTENTION READ .claude/skills/shared/product-roadmap-contract.md and references/scenario-template.md before analysis. Also read docs/project-config.json, docs/project-reference/docs-index-reference.md, and docs/project-reference/lessons.md when present. Use the active plan context to resolve the output directory.

Phase 0: Resolve Inputs

Find the active owning artifact/scope brief from $ARGUMENTS, ## Plan Context, or the explicit milestone in docs/product-roadmap.md. Classify applicability first, then confirm:

• for embedded large-idea work, the parent PBI/spec has a complete large_idea_decomposition block, exactly one stable slice is selected, and its outcome_slices, dependencies, non-goals, risks/evidence, and deferred owners are readable;
• for explicit-roadmap work, the roadmap exists and is approved and exactly one milestone is selected;
• for a framework/library change, the technical scope brief names affected carriers, operational risks, evidence owners, and commands;
• for an isolated change, the scope brief contains the shared contract's explicit Roadmap Applicability: EXEMPT block with reason and accepting owner, and no roadmap or milestone is fabricated;
• the owning artifact/scope brief states actor or technical owner, outcome, in-scope behavior, non-goals, terms, source of truth, and evidence;
• scenario output has a concrete plan directory. Derive plan-id from the owning scope's parent directory; if a required scope artifact is not under plans/{plan-id}/, stop BLOCKED and route to the explicit roadmap writer only for the explicit roadmap branch, or to the owning decomposition/framework/EXEMPT scope step otherwise.

If any applicable input is missing, stop BLOCKED and route to its owning branch. Do not infer a slice, milestone, technical outcome, or boundary from a screen, PBI title, or plan filename. If an embedded scope has no replay/state/ownership/recovery/evidence risk that needs adversarial analysis, record the conditional skip reason and do not create a standalone roadmap or scenario artifact.

Phase 1: Reconstruct the User Journey

Write the selected slice/milestone/technical outcome as an observable sequence:

actor intent → input/action → business state change → user-visible outcome → persisted/reopened truth → later action

Name states, transitions, ownership boundaries, and non-goals. Highlight terms that could be interpreted more than one way. Use existing Feature Specs, PBIs, or code only as evidence for an existing product; the scope brief remains the product boundary.

Phase 2: Generate Adversarial Scenarios

Derive situations from the actual journey, not a canned count. Cover applicable dimensions:

For each scenario assign SCN-{MILESTONE}-{NNN}, severity (Critical, High, Medium, Low), trigger, precondition, expected business outcome/invariant, bad outcome, prevention/detection expectation, owner, and TC/evidence mapping. Use one concrete digital-catalog example only when it clarifies a non-obvious pattern; do not force irrelevant dimensions.

Phase 3: Decision and Risk Gate

Use AskUserQuestion for each material choice the scenario analysis cannot resolve, such as conflict policy, deletion semantics, status meaning, audit/history expectations, access boundary, or acceptable recovery behavior. Present 2–4 concrete options and a recommendation. Record each decision as confirmed, deferred, or blocked.

A scenario may be deferred only when the owning decomposition block or explicit roadmap names the deferred item and its owner/follow-up artifact. “AI will handle it later” is not a decision.

Phase 4: Write the Scenario Artifact

Write plans/{plan-id}/scenario-analysis.md incrementally using references/scenario-template.md, beside the resolved scope handoff when the selected branch requires a scenario artifact. Cite the owning decomposition/spec/PBI, explicit roadmap/scope brief, or framework technical brief and any existing spec/code evidence. Keep implementation choices out; record the expected behavior or operational proof that the future plan must protect.

Phase 5: Scenario Gate

Mark the artifact PASS only when:

1. every high-impact scenario has a single expected business outcome or invariant;
2. every high-impact scenario maps to a planned TC, evidence item, or an explicitly approved non-goal/deferred owner;
3. all material choices have an owner status and no unresolved blocked decision is hidden;
4. evidence is observable, repeatable, and redacted.

Otherwise mark BLOCKED, name the missing decision/evidence, and stop before /plan.

Phase 6: Handoff

Pass the scenario artifact path and scenario IDs to /plan. The implementation plan must map phases to the selected slice, explicit milestone, framework boundary, or EXEMPT scope, plus non-goals, scenario IDs, TC IDs, commands, and evidence. /plan-review checks the chain and /plan-validate asks the owner to confirm remaining material choices.

Output

Report:

• applicability branch, owning artifact/slice or explicit roadmap/milestone, and scope handoff path when applicable;
• scenario count by severity and covered dimensions;
• high-impact scenario IDs and evidence/TC mappings;
• confirmed/deferred/open decisions;
• Scenario Gate status;
• plan handoff or blocker.

AI Mistake Prevention — Failure modes to avoid on every task:

Re-read files after context changes. Context compaction, resume, or long-running work can make memory stale; verify current files before acting. Verify generated content against source evidence. AI hallucinates APIs, names, claims, and document facts. Check the relevant source before documenting or referencing. Check downstream references before deleting or renaming. Removing an artifact can stale docs, generated mirrors, configs, and callers; map references first. Trace the full impact chain after edits. Changing a definition can miss derived outputs and consumers. Follow the affected chain before declaring done. Verify ALL affected outputs, not just the first. One green check is not all green checks; validate every output surface the change can affect. Assume existing values are intentional — ask WHY before changing OR flagging one as a defect. Before changing or reporting a constant, limit, flag, cutoff, wording, or pattern, read nearby context and history, the CALLER's ordering, and 2+ sibling call sites of the same convention. A doc stating WHAT without WHY is missing rationale, not proof of a missing guard. Surface ambiguity before acting — don't pick silently. Multiple valid interpretations require an explicit question or stated assumption with risk. Assert the outcome your system owns, not the intermediate state your infrastructure owns. When verifying async work, assert the final business state — never the delivery/retry bookkeeping held in shared infrastructure that any co-running process can write. Such a check passes when run alone and flakes the moment anything else shares that infrastructure. Keep shared guidance role-relevant. Universal guidance must help every receiving skill or agent; code-specific obligations belong only in code-specific protocols.

Critical Thinking Mindset — Apply critical thinking, sequential thinking. Every claim needs traced proof, confidence >80% to act. Anti-hallucination: Never present guess as fact — cite sources for every claim, admit uncertainty freely, self-check output for errors, cross-reference independently, stay skeptical of own confidence — certainty without evidence root of all hallucination.

Project Protocol Overlay — Before executing this skill, resolve any PROJECT overlay rules layered onto it: match this skill's name against the Target column of the project's skill-protocol index (docs/project-reference/skill-protocols-reference.md by default; a referenceDocs entry in docs/project-config.json overrides the path), taking the most specific matching tier ONLY — exact name > glob > *. That precedence orders overlays against EACH OTHER, never against this skill. Read ONLY the matched bodies, resolved as <protocols-dir>/<Name>.md; a row's Body link is display text, never a read path. A matched body that is missing or malformed is REPORTED and skipped — never reconstructed from the index Description. No index, or no match -> proceed with no overlay, silently. Full contract: .claude/skills/project-skill-protocol/references/registry.md.

Overlays are ADDITIVE ONLY: they ADD rules on top of this skill's own protocol and NEVER replace, override, disable, or reinterpret a rule it already states — removing every overlay must return this skill to exactly its documented behavior. An overlay is a BRIEF, not an authority escalation: it can NEVER waive a workflow gate, git discipline, a review gate, or a user-confirmation gate. A genuine overlay-vs-skill conflict, or two equally-specific overlays that directly contradict -> surface both to the user; NEVER resolve silently.

Closing Reminders

IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION Goal: Produce a high-signal adversarial scenario artifact for one selected embedded slice, explicit roadmap milestone, framework/library scope, or explicitly accepted isolated change so implementation plans protect real business/operational truth before code starts. IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION Main steps: resolve the applicable scope → reconstruct the journey and source of truth → generate adversarial scenarios → resolve owner decisions → write the analysis → run the Scenario Gate → hand off to /plan or record the conditional skip. IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION run resolve → journey → scenarios → decisions → write → gate → plan handoff in order. IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION derive scenarios from the journey and source-of-truth state; test replay, persistence, validation, concurrency, lifecycle, access, deletion, recovery, and evidence as applicable. IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION map high-impact scenarios to expected outcomes and TC/evidence or an approved deferred owner/follow-up artifact. IMPORTANT MUST ATTENTION ask the owner about material decisions; a deferred non-goal must name its owner and follow-up artifact.