specifying-work-items

To enforce design-first requirements, you must interrogate incoming requests, surface blockers, and challenge assumptions around security and privacy before drafting any spec. This gating process proves the work is safe to execute by requiring repository-grounded evidence and threat modeling.

CIA threat modeling evaluates Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability risks during spec review. You need it when governing high-risk or underspecified requests to ensure security constraints are documented and audited before any implementation begins.

Surface blockers by performing blocker-first gating that challenges assumptions and identifies gating constraints around security, privacy, and dependencies. This requires inspecting the target repository and demanding explicit evidence from standards files before trusting any project surfaces.

Yes, you can use cross-model audits to verify high-risk development requests by enforcing them as part of the spec review process. This audit gating validates threat modeling and source-of-truth synchronization before any approvals are granted.

The best way to govern underspecified work items is to enforce append-only updates that keep scope canonical, paired with source-of-truth sync and repository-grounded verification. This prevents unverified assumptions from entering implementation without written specs and audit gating.

Skipping spec review removes blocker-first gating, allowing unverified assumptions and security threats to pass unchecked into implementation. Without CIA threat modeling and cross-model audits, high-risk coding tasks lack the repository-grounded evidence needed to prove safety and maintain canonical scope.