PRD: review rigor — one review contract across every phase

[cahenesy]

Each authoring phase already ends in a review by a fresh worker, but the
depth varied. Requirements were self-reviewed only, design had a fixed
reviewer, and the /build-tdds review prompt was improvised on every run.
This update gives every phase the same review contract (FR-102–FR-110):

• FR-102: a coverage scan in the /prd-author interview. Nine categories
  are marked Clear / Partial / Missing in a PR-body table, and the most
  consequential, least settled questions are asked first.
• FR-103: a mechanical PRD pre-pass that blocks on placeholders, missing
  acceptance clauses, and duplicate or malformed ids, and flags
  unquantified terms.
• FR-104 and FR-105: an independent requirements review that blocks the
  PRD PR (REQUIREMENTS_REVIEW: PASS|BLOCK). It checks per-requirement
  quality and set-level consistency of the delta against the whole PRD,
  from product, implementer, tester and stakeholder viewpoints. A finding
  can be overridden with a recorded rationale that a re-run can reject.
• FR-106 and FR-107: the TDD pre-pass checks that Touched-files paths
  exist or are marked (new), going forward only, and blocks phrases
  that defer codebase discovery to the build.
• FR-108: the design review adds a cited simulation trace, an
  alternatives table for every blocker or major finding,
  terminology/duplication checks, and a metrics line.
• FR-109: the build review runs from a fixed reviewer prompt shipped with
  the plugin. The security checklist always applies, the trace must cite
  its steps, and findings on code the diff did not change are never a
  FAIL.
• FR-110: a reviewer may set a finding aside only by quoting it.
  Race, concurrency, filesystem and security findings are never
  dismissed by rule.

Sources: research of 2026-10-07 (spec-kit /analyze and /clarify, the
Superpowers spec reviewer, TestAny's PRD Reviewer, two 2026 arXiv
studies), and issue #195, folded in with its stale references corrected.

Coverage scan (FR-102, applied to this change)

Category	Status
Functional scope	Clear
Domain & data	Clear (reviewer reports, overrides, (new) marker)
Interaction & flow	Clear (pre-pass, then review, then override, then PR)
Non-functional	Partial: cost not bounded; resolved as no new bound (NFR-3)
Integrations	Clear (FR-51, FR-10, FR-15(d), FR-87)
Edge cases & failure	Clear (resume freshness, uncited trace steps, pre-existing debt)
Constraints & trade-offs	Clear (benchmark recall recorded as an assumption)
Terminology	Clear
Completion signals	Clear (every new FR has an observable acceptance)

Open assumptions & waivers

• Reviewer cost — resolved: no new bound; reviewers inherit the parent model (FR-87, NFR-3), and cost accounting stays a non-goal.
• Overrides as a rubber stamp — resolved: each override records the finding and a 20–400 character rationale in the PR body and Open questions; a re-run sees it and may block again.
• Grounding's new-file marker — resolved: an explicit (new) marker, applied only to TDDs written after this change.
• Simulation trace as theater — resolved: every step cites a source, and an uncited step is unverified and cannot alone support a PASS.
• Eval-aggregator check is throughline-specific — resolved: not a requirement; it goes in throughline's repo-level instructions, so the plugin stays generic.
• Scope of the anti-theater rule — resolved: a named non-finding must quote what it dismisses, and no category is blanket-dismissed.
• Whole PRD or delta — resolved: per-requirement checks cover the delta only; set-level checks compare the delta against the whole PRD.

UI requirements: none

Cascade

Additive: new FRs only, so no existing TDD is stale in its own scope.
Design work lands in the existing surfaces:

• /prd-author skill: FR-102, FR-103, FR-104, FR-105, plus a new
  requirements-reviewer prompt;
• tdd-lint (the FR-51 pre-pass): FR-106, FR-107;
• agents/design-reviewer.md (FR-10): FR-108;
• the /build-tdds review dispatch plus a new build-reviewer prompt
  (FR-15(d)): FR-109;
• every reviewer prompt, including ux-reviewer: FR-110.
  Enumerations amended here: FR-87 and NFR-3 now list the requirements
  reviewer.
  ADR 0015 is only touched in Open questions (cross-model-family review);
  it is not superseded.
  Follow-up outside the PRD: add throughline's eval-aggregator convention
  to the repo's own instructions.

Refs #195

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01NpGG21Y2VGGhTQaFr4oshB