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Unify open question handling and align PRD/design workflows#40

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adalton merged 2 commits into
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andalton/prd-design-alignment
May 11, 2026
Merged

Unify open question handling and align PRD/design workflows#40
adalton merged 2 commits into
mainfrom
andalton/prd-design-alignment

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@adalton adalton commented May 8, 2026

Summary

  • Adopt the PRD's transient open question pattern for the design workflow — resolved questions are incorporated into the relevant document section and the entry removed
  • Remove the design document appendix (assumptions resolved interactively, review focus areas moved to PR description)
  • Lift locked decisions check to cover all changes (including open question resolutions) in both workflow respond skills
  • Align acceptance criteria standard, metadata header fields, and section numbering conventions across both workflows

Test plan

  • Run /design draft on a new design — verify Section 8 uses Owner/Impact subsection format and no appendix is generated
  • Run /design respond on a PR with open question comments — verify resolution incorporates into target section and removes the entry
  • Run /design publish — verify "Requesting Review On" is populated dynamically from document content
  • Run /prd respond on a PR with open question comments — verify locked decisions check catches conflicts with resolutions
  • Run markdownlint across all modified files — verify no lint errors

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

The design workflow treated open questions as a permanent decision log
while the PRD workflow treated them as transient. This inconsistency
led to stale appendix entries and verbose Section 8 blocks in design
documents. Adopt the PRD's transient approach for both workflows:
resolved questions are incorporated into the relevant document section
and the entry removed.

Design workflow changes:
- Section 8 now uses Owner/Impact fields with transient lifecycle
- Appendix removed (assumptions resolved interactively in new Step 5,
  review focus areas moved to PR description via publish skill)
- Respond skill gains open question resolution mechanics
- Publish skill dynamically populates "Requesting Review On" from
  document content with explicit fallback for empty state
- Status field removed from metadata header (PR lifecycle is truth)
- PRD relative link added to metadata header

Cross-workflow alignment:
- Locked decisions check lifted to top of Step 4 in both respond
  skills, covering open question resolutions and general edits
- Acceptance criteria standard unified to "behavioral outcomes"
- Hardcoded section numbering removed from guidance and skills

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
@adalton adalton self-assigned this May 8, 2026
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coderabbitai Bot commented May 8, 2026

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ℹ️ Review info
⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Enterprise

Run ID: 000d5307-c2b4-489b-b08e-3e38b98b4c73

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 15033f0 and b711a00.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)
  • design/skills/draft.md
  • design/templates/design.md

Walkthrough

The PR updates design document and PRD workflows to standardize Open Questions with mandatory Owner and Impact fields, implement a structured resolution process, and integrate these changes across draft, publish, and respond skill workflows.

Changes

Open Questions Structure and Workflow

Layer / File(s) Summary
Open Questions Structure Definition
design/templates/design.md, design/templates/section-guidance.md, prd/templates/section-guidance.md, design/guidelines.md
Introduces required Owner and Impact fields for each numbered Open Question subsection. Design documents require transient questions that are removed once resolved. PRD and design templates establish consistent formatting. Design Hard Limits guideline states open questions must have owners and impact statements.
Metadata and Header Requirements
design/templates/design.md, design/skills/draft.md, design/templates/section-guidance.md
Metadata headers now include Jira link, relative PRD link (prd.md), and explicit Date field. Status field is removed. Draft workflow Step 1 updated to reflect new header structure.
Resolution and Verification Workflow
design/skills/draft.md
Step 5 replaces prior "Populate Review Notes Appendix" with "Resolve Outstanding Items" that collects inline [Assumption: ...] markers, TBD items, and incomplete open questions for user confirmation. Step 6 imports PRD open items into design Open Questions section and returns to Step 5 if gaps are found. Step 7 self-review checklist enforces no unresolved assumption markers and validates Open Questions have Owner/Impact fields with design-scope constraints.
Publication and Reviewer Presentation
design/skills/publish.md, design/skills/draft.md
Publish workflow Step 5 identifies reviewer-attention items from design document (Section 8 open questions, TBD markers, architectural trade-offs). PR description "Requesting Review On" template is design-document-driven with fallback "General review — no specific items flagged." when no items flagged. "How to Review" section reduces to inline commenting. Draft Step 9 "Present to User" emphasizes open questions, multiple-approach decisions, and low-confidence sections.
Responder Workflow and Resolution Handling
design/skills/respond.md, prd/skills/respond.md
Design respond workflow adds "Open question resolution" comment category and extended response template. PRD respond workflow checks locked decisions at start of Step 4 before any edits, including open-question resolutions. Open-question subsection identification is refined. Duplicate locked-decisions check removed from PRD changes subsection. Markdown formatting fixed in respond step boundary.
Quality Guidelines and Lifecycle
prd/guidelines.md, design/templates/section-guidance.md
PRD acceptance criteria must be behavioral outcomes (externally observable and testable). Open Questions lifecycle redefined: transient items removed during PR review, never preserved with outcome tracking. Prior requirement to preserve questions with "Outcome:" field removed.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~12 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5
✅ Passed checks (5 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Title check ✅ Passed The title clearly summarizes the main objective of the changeset: unifying open question handling and aligning PRD/design workflows across multiple template and skill files.
Description check ✅ Passed The description provides a clear summary of changes, organized objectives, and a test plan directly related to the modifications across design and PRD workflow files.
Docstring Coverage ✅ Passed No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check ✅ Passed Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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Actionable comments posted: 2

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@design/skills/draft.md`:
- Around line 129-134: The section is inconsistent about unresolved items:
update the text around Step 5 to require that any remaining "[Assumption: ...]"
markers must be resolved by converting each into either a concrete "Open
Question" entry that includes Owner and Impact fields or into a specific TBD
marker before removing assumption markers; specifically, change the lines
referencing "Items the user cannot resolve now" and the sentence "After this
step, the document should contain no `[Assumption: ...]` markers" to state this
required conversion path and give a short template example (Open Question:
[question] — Owner: [name/team]; Impact: [description]) so authors know how to
convert assumptions into Open Questions or explicit TBDs.

In `@design/templates/design.md`:
- Line 7: The PRD link in the template row "| PRD         | [prd.md](prd.md)    
|" is a concrete relative path that breaks CI link checks; replace the literal
"[prd.md](prd.md)" with a placeholder token (e.g., "[PRD]({PRD_LINK})" or
"[PRD](%PRD_LINK%)") so the template contains a non-resolving placeholder
instead of an actual relative link, and ensure any README/template generation
code expects and replaces the token with the real relative path when rendering
final docs.
🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

  • Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
  • Create a new PR with the fixes

ℹ️ Review info
⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Enterprise

Run ID: c38c1a0a-4dae-40db-b287-0f477e6f4bd7

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 2481203 and 15033f0.

📒 Files selected for processing (9)
  • design/guidelines.md
  • design/skills/draft.md
  • design/skills/publish.md
  • design/skills/respond.md
  • design/templates/design.md
  • design/templates/section-guidance.md
  • prd/guidelines.md
  • prd/skills/respond.md
  • prd/templates/section-guidance.md

Comment thread design/skills/draft.md Outdated
Comment thread design/templates/design.md Outdated
- Clarify assumption conversion path in draft Step 5: unresolved
  assumptions must be converted to Open Questions or TBDs before
  removing the marker, not left as-is
- Replace concrete prd.md link in template with placeholder token
  to avoid CI link-check failures (lychee excludes {placeholder} URLs)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
@adalton adalton requested a review from amir-yogev-gh May 8, 2026 17:57
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@amir-yogev-gh amir-yogev-gh left a comment

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LGTM

@adalton adalton merged commit 35ed63f into main May 11, 2026
7 checks passed
@adalton adalton deleted the andalton/prd-design-alignment branch May 11, 2026 12:40
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2 participants