/kiro-spec-requirements

name: kiro-spec-requirements
description: Generate comprehensive requirements for a specification
metadata:
  shared-rules: "ears-format.md, requirements-review-gate.md"

Requirements Generation

<background_information>

• **Success Criteria**:
• Create complete requirements document aligned with steering context
• Follow the project's EARS patterns and constraints for all acceptance criteria
• Focus on core functionality without implementation details
• Make inclusion/exclusion boundaries explicit when scope could otherwise be misread
• Update metadata to track generation status

</background_information>

<instructions>

Execution Steps

1. **Load Context**:

• Read `{{KIRO_DIR}}/specs/$1/spec.json` for language and metadata
• Read `{{KIRO_DIR}}/specs/$1/brief.md` if it exists (discovery context: problem, approach, scope decisions, boundary candidates)
• Read `{{KIRO_DIR}}/specs/$1/requirements.md` for project description
• Core steering context: `product.md`, `tech.md`, `structure.md`
• Additional steering files only when directly relevant to feature scope, user personas, business/domain rules, compliance/security constraints, operational constraints, or existing product boundaries
• Relevant local agent skills or playbooks only when they clearly match the feature's host environment or use case and contain domain terminology or workflow rules that shape user-observable requirements

2. **Read Guidelines**:

• Read `rules/ears-format.md` from this skill's directory for EARS syntax rules
• Read `rules/requirements-review-gate.md` from this skill's directory for pre-write review criteria
• Read `{{KIRO_DIR}}/settings/templates/specs/requirements.md` for document structure

Parallel Research (sub-agent dispatch)

The following research areas are independent. Decide the optimal decomposition based on project complexity -- split, merge, add, or skip sub-agents as needed.

**In main context** (essential for requirements generation):

• Spec files: spec.json, brief.md, requirements.md (project description)
• EARS format rules, requirements review gate, requirements template
• Core steering: product.md, tech.md (directly inform scope and constraints)

**Delegate to sub-agent** (keeps exploration out of main context):

• **Codebase hints** (brownfield projects): Spawn a sub-agent to explore existing implementations that inform requirement scope. Ask it to summarize: (1) what already exists, (2) relevant interfaces/APIs, (3) patterns that new requirements should align with. Return a summary under 150 lines.
• **Domain research** (when external knowledge is needed): Spawn a sub-agent for web research on domain-specific requirements, standards, or best practices. Return a concise findings summary.
• **Additional steering and playbooks**: If many steering files or local agent playbooks exist, spawn a sub-agent to scan them and return only the sections relevant to this feature.

For greenfield projects with minimal codebase, skip sub-agent dispatch and load context directly. If multi-agent is not available, execute sequentially in main context.

After all research completes, synthesize findings in main context before generating requirements.

3. **Generate Requirements Draft**:

• Create initial requirements draft based on project description
• Group related functionality into logical requirement areas
• Apply EARS format to all acceptance criteria
• Use language specified in spec.json
• Preserve terminology continuity across phases:
• discovery = `Boundary Candidates`
• requirements = explicit inclusion/exclusion and adjacent expectations when needed
• design = `Boundary Commitments`
• tasks = `_Boundary:_`
• If scope could be misread, add lightweight boundary context without introducing implementation or architecture ownership detail
• Keep this as a draft until the review gate passes; do not write `requirements.md` yet

4. **Review Requirements Draft**:

• Run the `Requirements Review Gate` from `rules/requirements-review-gate.md`
• Review coverage, EARS compliance, ambiguity, adjacent expectations, and scope boundaries before finalizing
• If issues are local to the draft, repair the requirements and review again
• Keep the review bounded to at most 2 repair passes
• If the draft exposes a real scope ambiguity or contradiction, stop and ask the user to clarify instead of writing guessed requirements

5. **Finalize and Update Metadata**:

• Write `{{KIRO_DIR}}/specs/$1/requirements.md` only after the requirements review gate passes
• Set `phase: "requirements-generated"`
• Set `approvals.requirements.generated: true`
• Update `updated_at` timestamp

Important Constraints

Requirements Scope: WHAT, not HOW

Requirements describe user-observable behavior, not implementation. Use this to decide what belongs here vs. in design:

**Ask the user about (requirements scope):**

• Functional scope — what is included and what is excluded
• User-observable behavior — "when X happens, what should the user see/experience?"
• Business rules and edge cases — limits, error conditions, special cases
• Non-functional requirements visible to users — response time expectations, availability, security level
• Adjacent expectations only when they change user-visible behavior or operator expectations — what this feature relies on, and what it explicitly does not own

**Do not ask about (design scope — defer to design phase):**

• Technology stack choices (database, framework, language)
• Architecture patterns (microservices, monolith, event-driven)
• API design, data models, internal component structure
• How to achieve non-functional requirements (caching strategy, scaling approach)
• Internal ownership mapping, component seams, or implementation boundaries that belong in design

**Litmus test**: If an EARS acceptance criterion can be written without mentioning any technology, it belongs in requirement