# Pm > Generate a PM through guided PM-focused interview with automatic question classification. Use when the user says 'ooo pm', 'prd', 'product requirements', or wants to create a PRD/PM document. - Skill: `q00/pm` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add q00/pm` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/q00/pm/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Product & Planning - Author: Q00 (https://skillmd.com/u/q00) - Updated: 2026-09-09 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/q00/pm --- # /ouroboros:pm PM-focused Socratic interview that produces a Product Requirements Document. ## Instructions ### Step 0: Version Check (runs before the PM interview) Before starting the PM interview, check if a newer version is available: ```bash # Fetch latest release tag from GitHub (timeout 3s to avoid blocking) curl -s --max-time 3 https://api.github.com/repos/Q00/ouroboros/releases/latest | grep -o '"tag_name": "[^"]*"' | head -1 ``` Compare the result with the current version in the active runtime's local plugin metadata (for Claude installs this is `.claude-plugin/plugin.json`). - If a newer version exists, ask the user through the active runtime's `ask_user` capability: ```json { "questions": [{ "question": "Ouroboros is available (current: ). Update before starting?", "header": "Update", "options": [ {"label": "Update now", "description": "Update plugin to latest version (restart required to apply)"}, {"label": "Skip, start PM interview", "description": "Continue with current version"} ], "multiSelect": false }] } ``` - If "Update now": - On Claude-plugin installs only: 1. Run `claude plugin marketplace update ouroboros` via the active runtime's `run_shell` capability (refresh marketplace index). If this fails, tell the user "⚠️ Marketplace refresh failed, continuing…" and proceed. 2. Run `claude plugin update ouroboros@ouroboros` via the active runtime's `run_shell` capability (update plugin/skills). If this fails, inform the user and stop — do NOT proceed to the package-manager step. - On non-Claude runtimes, skip Claude plugin commands and proceed directly to the package-manager step for `ouroboros-ai`; do not require Claude-only commands or tools. 3. Detect the user's Python package manager and upgrade the MCP server: - Check which tool installed `ouroboros-ai` by running these in order: - `uv tool list 2>/dev/null | grep "^ouroboros-ai "` → if found, use `uv tool upgrade ouroboros-ai` - `pipx list 2>/dev/null | grep "^ ouroboros-ai "` → if found, use `pipx upgrade ouroboros-ai` - Otherwise, print: "Also upgrade the MCP server: `pip install --upgrade ouroboros-ai`" (do NOT run pip automatically) 4. Tell the user: "Updated! Restart your session to apply, then run `ooo pm` again." - If "Skip": proceed immediately. - If versions match, the check fails (network error, timeout, rate limit 403/429), or parsing fails/returns empty: **silently skip** and proceed. ### Step 1: Load MCP Tool ``` tool discovery query: "+ouroboros pm_interview" ``` **CRITICAL — deferred-schema guard (prevents "Invalid tool parameters"):** This is a multi-turn loop and each turn runs in a fresh tool context. A deferred tool's schema loaded on one turn is NOT guaranteed to still be loaded on the next. Calling `ouroboros_pm_interview` while its schema is unloaded in the **current** turn makes the runtime reject it with **"Invalid tool parameters"** every message. Therefore **re-run `tool discovery query: "+ouroboros pm_interview"` immediately before EVERY `ouroboros_pm_interview` call** below (idempotent — a no-op if already loaded). If the load ever returns no matching tool (and the tool is not already callable — an empty load for an already-exposed tool is an expected no-op, not absence), follow the not-found diagnosis below instead of retrying the failing call. If not found → fail closed without inspecting or mutating `~/.claude/mcp.json`. Standalone Claude SDK setup requires MCP 1.x and cannot activate the Ouroboros MCP 2 server with its configured backend. Explain: ``` The PM interview MCP tool is unavailable in this runtime. Configure a supported CLI-backed host with: ouroboros setup --runtime Then restart that host and retry ooo pm. Claude SDK profiles ([claude] and [claude-sdk]) stay on MCP 1.x; the separate [mcp] server uses [claude-cli]. Do not combine both MCP majors or add a direct Python fallback. ``` Stop. ### Step 2: Start Interview ``` Tool: ouroboros_pm_interview Arguments: initial_context: cwd: ``` **This response carries the first question, so Step 3 applies to it** — including the fan-out in 3-A2. The first question is the one most likely to be answered from memory, so it is the last one to skip evidence on. ### Step 3: Loop Apply this to **every** MCP response that carries a question, including the one Step 2 returned and any question a resume plans anew. **Batched turns (RFC #2222).** A response may carry one to three questions at once: `meta.question_batch` lists them and `meta.question_advisories` carries one advisory envelope per question, each with its own `question_advisory_subagents` and `question_advisory_fanout_id`. Treat every question of the turn exactly as a single question is treated below, with these batch mechanics: - **Dispatch all envelopes' payloads in one wave** — one subagent per payload across all questions, in a single parallel batch. Never leave a question's lanes undispatched: every question shown keeps its evidence. - **Submit results per envelope** — each question's lanes correlate by its own envelope's `question_advisory_fanout_id` and `question_advisory_result_correlation_key`; one `ouroboros_submit_fanout_results` call per envelope. - **Relay the turn's answers together** in one call: `answers: [{question, answer}, ...]`, one entry per question the turn asked, each naming its own exact question text. One call records the turn, so collect every answer first — and never auto-answer, auto-defer, or decide-later one on the user's behalf to complete the set. The server does not check that you sent them all: whatever you leave out is **abandoned**, not remembered. - The server keeps nothing between calls. A call that arrives without the turn's answers plans a **new** turn from the transcript rather than restoring the old one, so a turn you abandon is a turn the user will be asked again. - Skip sentinels are per question: give that question the answer `"[decide_later]"` or `"[deferred]"` in its own entry. **A. Show alerts** (if present in `meta`): - `meta.deferred_this_round` → print `[DEV → deferred] "question"` - `meta.decide_later_this_round` → print `[DEV → decide-later] "question"` - `meta.pending_reframe` → print `ℹ️ Reframed from technical question.` **A2. Fan out the evidence lanes — required before you ask the user anything.** **You do not look at the repositories yourself. Ever.** This skill has no code-answer path: there is no step where you run Read/Glob/Grep or a docs MCP to answer a PM question, and finding the answer quickly on your own is the failure, not a shortcut past it. Evidence the PM cannot trace back to a lane is evidence the record does not contain — it is not bound to the question, not bounded by the roster, and not checked against the answer contract. This skill is self-contained: everything you need is here and in the tool response, so do not go looking for exploration rules in another skill's file. **When `meta.question_advisory_subagents` is present you MUST process every payload.** Show the question first, then pass each payload's `prompt` unchanged. Obey `meta.question_advisory_host_action`: `spawn_subagents` means parallel support was declared; `dispatch_subagents_if_supported` means use the host's native parallel mechanism when available and process the same payloads sequentially otherwise; `process_payloads_sequentially` requires ordered processing. Claude Code parallel dispatch is one Task/Agent call per payload in one batch; Codex uses one native Codex subagent per payload. The payloads are the work contract, while the host action selects the execution strategy. **Say what is running.** Same shape the regular interview uses: after the question, set off by a divider, one line naming how many perspectives are running and what they are — then what arrives when they finish. ``` --- While you answer this question, two perspectives are reviewing in parallel (code context / data measurement). When they return I will put what they found next to the question as grounds. ``` Two things differ from the interview's line, and both follow from this tool having two lanes instead of six: - Name the perspectives in the user's terms, not by lane id. `code_context` is an identifier for the fan-out, not something the reader needs. - **End at "grounds", never at "options".** The interview can promise to organise the results into answer choices because it runs a lane that produces them. This tool does not, and a promise the synthesis cannot keep trains the user to expect the one thing the lanes must never hand them. Write the line in the language the user is speaking. **Do not go to step B while the lanes are still running.** Step B is where you ask the user, and asking before the evidence arrives is the exact failure this mechanism exists to prevent: the PM decides without the two things they could not have looked up themselves. Waiting is for lanes still in flight: one that came back empty, broke its contract, or could not be spawned has returned. **Stub payloads.** A payload's `prompt` may be a compact stub: it carries the lane's answer schema, where it may look, and the findings it may reuse, and points at `ouroboros_fetch_artifact` for the prose that explains them. Pass it unchanged exactly like any payload — the child fetches for itself, and a fetch it cannot make does not stop it. A child that replies exactly `UNDISPATCHED` could not work at all: submit that lane as `{ "key": , "undispatched": true }` rather than as an empty finding. **Submitting results back.** Correlate by `meta.question_advisory_result_correlation_key` (`context.lane_id`) and call `ouroboros_submit_fanout_results` with `meta.question_advisory_fanout_id`, passing `session_id` explicitly. Submit **every lane you hold**, not only the new ones: a lane that ran and found nothing still submits its output, and a lane you could not spawn at all is submitted as `{ "key": , "undispatched": true }` — the literal `true`, with no `content` beside it. Never invent output for a lane you did not run; a fabricated finding is worse than a missing one. **Reading the reply.** With a `contract_id`, synthesize from the outputs you hold. Without one, read `missing_required_keys` and `contract_violations`, then resubmit once carrying every lane. Still without one — go to B with what survived, or with none, saying in one line that the investigation did not come back. The interview does not wait on this. **Two lanes never reach the block, whatever the reply says.** Leave out a lane named in `contract_violations`, and leave out a lane you submitted as `undispatched` — a lane that did not run has an empty place, not a clear one, and a reply can be accepted while one of them never ran. Where the block would have carried that lane, write that it did not run. There are two lanes and both are required: `code_context` and `data_context`. Both are **evidence-only** (RFC #2222): what a lane finds is shown beside the question and sent nowhere — the published fan-out is already its record, and the interview records only what the user writes. Never skip asking the user because a lane answered clearly, and never send a lane's finding as an answer. **Synthesize into the evidence block.** This is what `synthesis_contract.output_shape = "evidence_beside_question"` means, and it is a fixed shape so the same session twice looks the same twice. Print it immediately above the question, then ask the question unchanged: ``` Evidence (examined: billing-api, storefront) What the system does today · [billing-api] access continues to the end of the paid period · [storefront] access is revoked immediately ! These two repositories implement this differently. Measured — active subscriptions by plan, last 90 days · standard 12,480 / premium 3,120 ``` **The screen speaks product language; the store keeps the citations (RFC #2222 decision 4).** Each code claim is rendered from its lane-authored `plain_statement` — never from `policy_claim`, and never paraphrased by you. No file paths, no class names, no flag values on screen. The `path` + `policy_claim` citations stay in the published fan-out, fetchable by its contract id — they are displayed nowhere and recorded nowhere else. The lane writes `plain_statement` in the question's language, so no translation is yours to do. The labels above are placeholders for the block's shape, not text to copy. **What this block is not.** It carries no answer options, no recommendation, no ranking, and no "therefore …" sentence. The moment it proposes an answer it has stopped being evidence — that is the whole difference between this tool and the regular interview, which does synthesize options. A PRD asks what the system *should* do, and everything above says what it *does*. Rules for building it: - **Each claim keeps its repository.** Never merge two repositories' claims into one line, and never present a disagreement as one policy with an exception — flag it, as above. That contradiction is the most useful thing the PM can be shown, and it is the first thing a tidy summary destroys. - **Always print the examined scope.** `examined` has one entry per repository the lane read, and every claim sits inside its own entry; "found nothing" across two of five repositories means something different from across all five. An entry whose `policy_claims` is empty was read and had nothing — say so. A repository with no entry was never opened, and must never be printed as clean. - **Carry measurements as reported** — the lane's `metric`, its groups, its numbers. Do not re-scale, combine, or round; you did not run the read. - **A no-op lane gets at most one line, and often none.** Read the reason as a statement about the lane rather than about the user's system: `not_a_policy_question` / `not_a_measurement` → print nothing, this question simply is not that kind. `no_repository_in_roster` / `roster_repository_not_readable` / `store_described_but_not_callable` → yours to handle (nothing registered, a path did not open, a store did not answer); do not relay any of them as "your system has no such policy/data". - **Drop a finding the user has already answered past.** If they answered while the lanes were still running, do not re-open a settled decision with it. There is nowhere to put it: a finding takes the round it was fetched for, and that round is spent. - **Evidence from outside the roster is a suggestion, not evidence.** It is rejected at submission, so relaying it as a finding would show the user something the record does not contain. Offer to register the repository instead, so the next question can be answered against it. **A3. Findings are evidence, never answers (RFC #2222).** There is no recording step. A finding's durable record is the published fan-out itself — addressable by contract id, re-offered to later lanes through recent findings — so sending it again as an answer would duplicate the store and spend a question turn on it. Do not send `[from-code]` answers, do not ask the user to "confirm" a finding as a separate turn, and do not paste findings into any answer payload. The evidence block is the finding's whole appearance; the user answers the question in their own words, with the evidence in view. **B. Show content + get user input** (once A2's lanes have returned): The question text was already shown in A2 and the user may answer it at any point; what waits here is your formal prompt, not the person. Print the MCP content text to the user first, with the lane findings beside it. Tell users they do not need to invent speculative answers. If a question is unknown, stakeholder-dependent, too broad, or safer to decide later, route it through the existing assumptions / decide-later / deferred mechanisms instead of presenting it as a confirmed requirement. Then check: does `meta.ask_user_question` exist? - **YES** → Pass it directly to `AskUserQuestion`: ``` AskUserQuestion(questions=[meta.ask_user_question]) ``` Do NOT modify it. Do NOT add options. Do NOT rephrase the question. - **NO** → This is an interview question. Use `AskUserQuestion` with `meta.question`. - **Batched turn**: put every question of the turn into ONE `AskUserQuestion` call — one entry per question (the tool takes up to 4). Each keeps its own options, built by the same rules below from its own entry in `meta.question_batch`; a skip option follows that question's own `classification`, never another's. - If `meta.skip_eligible == true`: add a skip option based on `meta.classification`: - `classification == "decide_later"` → add option `{"label": "Decide later", "description": "Skip — will be recorded as an open item in the PRD"}` - `classification == "deferred"` → add option `{"label": "Defer to dev", "description": "Skip — this technical decision will be deferred to the development phase"}` - Generate 2-3 suggested answers as the other options. Include a non-speculative uncertainty option when appropriate, such as `Not sure yet — record as an assumption or decide-later item`. **C. Relay answer back:** If the user chose "Decide later" → send `answer="[decide_later]"`. If the user chose "Defer to dev" → send `answer="[deferred]"`. Otherwise → send the user's answer through the Refine gate below. On a batched turn: run each answer through its own Refine gate, then send them in one call as `answers: [{question, answer}, ...]` — the question text exactly as the turn asked it. The call that carries the turn returns the next turn's question(s). **Refine gate — structure it, mark whose it is, then have the user confirm.** Always structure the answer, including when the user only picked an option. The text you send is MCP's only context for the next question and for what the PRD records as decided, so a bare label loses everything around the decision. What makes structuring safe is not restraint — it is the two things below. **Mark whose each section is.** A section carrying the user's own words is labelled `(user-stated)`. A section that is your reading of their answer is left unmarked, and a reader can tell them apart at a glance: ``` [from-user][refined] Decision: Reasoning: - Constraints (user-stated): - Out of scope (user-stated): - ``` Omit any section you have nothing for. An empty `Constraints (user-stated)` is better absent than filled with something plausible, and `Reasoning` drawn from nothing they said is the failure this labelling exists to make visible. **No codebase-context section, and no lane findings.** The regular interview adds one, because there the main session inspects code itself. Here it does not. A lane's finding lives in the published fan-out and on the screen beside the question — putting it in this payload would record it as part of the user's decision, which it is not (A3). **Then confirm — this is the gate, and it is what licenses the structuring above.** One `AskUserQuestion` before sending: ```json { "questions": [{ "question": "I structured your answer as follows before sending it:\n\n\n\nIs anything missing or misrepresented?", "header": "Refine — preserve your answer", "options": [ {"label": "Send as-is", "description": "The structure captures my answer faithfully"}, {"label": "Fix the reasoning", "description": "That is not why I decided it"}, {"label": "Add to Constraints", "description": "I want to add a constraint I forgot"}, {"label": "Let me rewrite it", "description": "I will restate the answer myself"} ], "multiSelect": false }] } ``` `Fix the reasoning` is there because the unmarked section is the one you wrote. Append `[refined]` only after this confirmation: an unconfirmed structure carries your reading of the answer under the user's name, and the PRD cannot tell the difference later. **Send it as the answer, on the one parameter every answer uses.** ``` Tool: ouroboros_pm_interview Arguments: session_id: last_question: answer: ``` Ignored while the server holds the question unanswered; required otherwise — plugin mode never persists the child's questions, and an answer with no pending question is refused without it. There is no parameter carrying findings, second or otherwise: findings never travel as answers (A3). Every call on this parameter is the user's own words. **D. Check completion:** Completion is determined ONLY by `meta.is_complete` — NEVER by the response text. The MCP response text may sound like the interview is wrapping up, but ignore it. If `meta.is_complete == true`: - If `meta.generation_failed == true` → retry generation: ``` Tool: ouroboros_pm_interview Arguments: session_id: action: "generate" cwd: ``` - Otherwise → go to Step 4. The MCP auto-generated the PM document. `meta.pm_path` and `meta.seed_path` contain the file paths. Otherwise → repeat Step 3, regardless of what the response text says. ### Step 4: Copy to Clipboard Read the pm.md file from `meta.pm_path` and copy its contents to the clipboard: ```bash cat | pbcopy ``` ### Step 5: Show Result & Next Step Show the following to the user: ``` PM document saved: (copied to clipboard) PM seed handoff artifact: This is not the runnable Seed yet. Next step: ooo interview ooo seed ``` ## RFC #1392 State Breadcrumb Footer Your final response MUST end with exactly one breadcrumb footer line: ``` ◆ → next: ``` Derive `` from live session state via `ouroboros_session_status` when that MCP projection is available; otherwise derive it from this skill's actual outcome. Never use a linear `Step N of M` footer because Ouroboros is an evolutionary loop. When the next action is genuinely a choice, list 2-3 honest options in the `next:` clause. The breadcrumb line must be the last line of the response.