Chapter Five · Specification
Specifying the Task
The specify stage of the loop, done on Cragmoor's first real task: the full-refund window shrinks from 24 hours to 12. Five topics turn one sentence into a task an agent can finish, a plan you correct before any file changes, three small committed steps, a table of examples that will become tests, and the judgement of when to type it yourself.
An agent answers an unclear request with a diff, not a question. Whatever a colleague would have asked before starting, the agent decides for itself, silently, and you find out which way it decided when you read the change. This chapter moves those decisions to before the work, where each one costs a sentence instead of a discarded run.
The refund change runs through every page. It starts as one sentence and becomes a ten-line task with scope, done-criteria, constraints and files out of bounds, including Ines's ruling on bookings made before the change. The agent's plan for it misses a file and adds a configuration system nobody asked for, and both are corrected in one message. The work is cut into three commits, each one small enough to read in a sitting. The rule's boundary, exactly 12 hours, is pinned by a table of examples. And the last page asks honestly whether a change this small needs the agent at all.