AI-DLC Rules / Construction Rules

NFR Requirements

Quality requirements rules

NFR Requirements

Prerequisites

  • Functional Design must be complete for the unit
  • Unit functional design artifacts must be available
  • Execution plan must indicate NFR Requirements stage should execute

Overview

Determine non-functional requirements for the unit and make tech stack choices.

Steps to Execute

Step 1: Analyze Functional Design

  • Read functional design artifacts from aidlc-docs/construction/{unit-name}/functional-design/
  • Understand business logic complexity and requirements

Step 2: Create NFR Requirements Plan

  • Generate plan with checkboxes [] for NFR assessment
  • Focus on scalability, performance, availability, security
  • Each step should have a checkbox []

Step 3: Generate Context-Appropriate Questions

DIRECTIVE: Thoroughly analyze the functional design to identify ALL areas where NFR clarification would improve system quality and architecture decisions. Be proactive in asking questions to ensure comprehensive NFR coverage.

CRITICAL: Default to asking questions when there is ANY ambiguity or missing detail that could affect system quality. It's better to ask too many questions than to make incorrect NFR assumptions.

  • EMBED questions using [Answer]: tag format
  • Focus on ANY ambiguities, missing information, or areas needing clarification
  • Generate questions wherever user input would improve NFR and tech stack decisions
  • When in doubt, ask the question - overconfidence leads to poor system quality

Question categories to evaluate (consider ALL categories):

  • Scalability Requirements - Ask about expected load, growth patterns, scaling triggers, and capacity planning
  • Performance Requirements - Ask about response times, throughput, latency, and performance benchmarks
  • Availability Requirements - Ask about uptime expectations, disaster recovery, failover, and business continuity
  • Security Requirements - Ask about data protection, compliance, authentication, authorization, and threat models
  • Tech Stack Selection - Ask about technology preferences, constraints, existing systems, and integration requirements
  • Reliability Requirements - Ask about error handling, fault tolerance, monitoring, and alerting needs
  • Maintainability Requirements - Ask about code quality, documentation, testing, and operational requirements
  • Usability Requirements - Ask about user experience, accessibility, and interface requirements

Step 4: Store Plan

  • Save as aidlc-docs/construction/plans/{unit-name}-nfr-requirements-plan.md
  • Include all [Answer]: tags for user input

Step 5: Collect and Analyze Answers

  • Wait for user to complete all [Answer]: tags
  • MANDATORY: Carefully review ALL responses for vague or ambiguous answers
  • CRITICAL: Add follow-up questions for ANY unclear responses - do not proceed with ambiguity
  • Look for responses like "depends", "maybe", "not sure", "mix of", "somewhere between", "standard", "typical"
  • Create clarification questions file if ANY ambiguities are detected
  • Do not proceed until ALL ambiguities are resolved

Step 6: Generate NFR Requirements Artifacts

  • Create aidlc-docs/construction/{unit-name}/nfr-requirements/nfr-requirements.md
  • Create aidlc-docs/construction/{unit-name}/nfr-requirements/tech-stack-decisions.md

Step 7: Present Completion Message

  • Present completion message in this structure:
    1. Completion Announcement (mandatory): Always start with this:
# 📊 NFR Requirements Complete - [unit-name]

 2. **AI Summary** (optional): Provide structured bullet-point summary of NFR requirements
    - Format: "NFR requirements assessment has identified [description]:"
    - List key scalability, performance, availability requirements (bullet points)
    - List security and compliance requirements identified
    - Mention tech stack decisions and rationale
    - DO NOT include workflow instructions ("please review", "let me know", "proceed to next phase", "before we proceed")
    - Keep factual and content-focused
 3. **Formatted Workflow Message** (mandatory): Always end with this exact format:

> **📋 <u>**REVIEW REQUIRED:**</u>**  
> Please examine the NFR requirements at: `aidlc-docs/construction/[unit-name]/nfr-requirements/`



> **🚀 <u>**WHAT'S NEXT?**</u>**
>
> **You may:**
>
> 🔧 **Request Changes** - Ask for modifications to the NFR requirements based on your review  
> ✅ **Continue to Next Stage** - Approve NFR requirements and proceed to **[next-stage-name]**

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Step 8: Wait for Explicit Approval

  • Do not proceed until the user explicitly approves the NFR requirements
  • Approval must be clear and unambiguous
  • If user requests changes, update the requirements and repeat the approval process

Step 9: Record Approval and Update Progress

  • Log approval in audit.md with timestamp
  • Record the user's approval response with timestamp
  • Mark NFR Requirements stage complete in aidlc-state.md