Discover Acs

discover-acs

Discover a feature's acceptance criteria — Checkpoint 2. ACs are decisions about what behaviors must work, in domain language. They precede the Given/When/Then formalization that atdd plugin atdd skill produces.

Separating AC discovery (divergent decisions) from spec formalization (convergent encoding) is what protects domain language from leaking into implementation language.

When to use

On a feature with autonomy_level set and status of ready (greenfield) or in-progress/done (onboarded existing work). Produces acs.md.

Two modes:

• Greenfield — status: ready, no existing spec. Discover ACs from scratch via the four-pass interview.
• Reverse-engineer — onboarded feature (in-progress/done) that already has a spec (a Speckit spec.md, a design doc, shipped code). Extract candidate ACs from the existing material, then interview only for the gaps it leaves.

Not for: a parked feature (discuss to promote first); a feature that already has a complete acs.md (feature-edit); producing Given/When/Then specs (atdd plugin atdd skill); deciding whether to build the feature (discuss).

Workflow

Step 0 — Entry gate. Before starting, verify the prior checkpoint is complete: run ${PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_handoff.py <feature-dir> --through 1.5. On a non-zero exit, stop and surface the gap to the human — do not proceed.

Verify branch hygiene: run ${PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_branch.py <feature-dir>. On a non-zero exit, stop and surface the message to the human — switch branches and re-invoke. The check honors the git.manual: true manifest opt-out.

After the gate passes, show the pipeline breadcrumb: run ${PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_progress.py <feature-dir> and present its output to the human — it shows where this checkpoint sits in the DAE pipeline. The breadcrumb is advisory: a non-zero exit or a missing progress.md never blocks the skill. Then create one Codex plan item per workflow step below. See ${PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/progress-indicator.md.

1. Resolve + validate — resolve the methodology root + manifest via ${PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/dae_resolve.py (see references/resolving.md); locate the feature. Reject if not found, if status: parked (→ discuss to promote first), or if acs.md already exists with content. Pick the mode: existing spec/code present → reverse-engineer; else → greenfield.

2. Load — feature.md, CHARTER.md, manifest.yml, prior handoffs/. Reverse-engineer mode: also load the existing spec / design doc / relevant code. For code lookup in reverse-engineer mode (surveying what exists, tracing what calls what), prefer LSP workspace-symbols / find-references when an LSP MCP capability is available; fall back to grep + Read otherwise. See ${PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/code-lookup.md.

3. Discover the ACs:

   • Greenfield — interview in four passes, one question per turn, coverage prompts per pass.
   • Reverse-engineer — extract candidate ACs from the existing material, organized by the four passes; then interview only for genuine gaps the material leaves undecided. Gap questions may be batched (e.g. one prompt the user with up to 4) rather than one-per-turn — the existing material already carries the bulk.

   The four passes:

   • Happy path — the core journey, every behavior when all goes right
   • Edge cases — empty / extreme / boundary / concurrency / partial state
   • Errors & security — missing/malformed input, authorization, external failure, abuse
   • Cross-cutting — audit, observability, idempotency, data lifecycle, performance

4. Enforce domain language — when implementation leaks in ("returns 401", "the endpoint", table/class names), soft-warn and rephrase to the user-observable behavior; user confirms. Don't block — educate.

5. Handle scope drift — if a behavior surfaces outside feature.md's outcome, offer three options: broaden feature.md, drop as out-of-scope, or park a separate discuss. User picks.

6. Coverage check — before writing, report ACs captured + which passes were covered; if a pass was skipped, prompt once.

7. Write acs.md — YAML frontmatter (ac_count, high_priority_count, discovered) + numbered ## AC-N: <name> sections, each with Priority, Type, and a domain-language body.

8. Handoff — emit a summary.

Re-invoking on a feature with existing acs.md is an edit pass (preserve AC IDs). Big restructures → feature-edit.

In reverse-engineer mode, note in the handoff that acs.md and the original spec should later be reconciled — a good consistency-check target.

Handoff

Emit per ${PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/handoff-summary.md. checkpoint: 2; human_action_needed: yes (review); recommended_next: "engineer plugin -> atdd skill to formalize as Given/When/Then specs" (greenfield), or "engineer plugin -> consistency-check skill to reconcile acs.md against the existing spec" (reverse-engineer).

The handoff MUST include the exit_criteria block asserting each of Checkpoint 2's exit criteria (Foundation Design Section 8) with verified_by, met, and evidence. For verified_by: tool criteria, the evidence MUST be the tool's actual output. The checkpoint is marked done only when every criterion is met.

References

• Foundation Design — feature.md schema
• The DAE methodology page — why ACs and specs are separate