Chimp
The spec
The specification says what the app is and how anyone can tell whether it works. It is written by the AI from your answers, saved in Data Management, and approved by a person before anything is designed or built.
Watch the video
The Spec Interview3:05 videoWhat it holds
| Goal | What to count to know it is working, such as booking requests per week, and a target if you gave one. |
|---|---|
| Pages | Every page or screen, with its address. |
| What visitors can do | The user stories, grouped into epics (What people can do for a web app or client portal). Open a story to see its acceptance criteria: the checks a tester can make. |
| What it stores | For web apps, stores and portals: the things it keeps, their fields and who can see them. |
| Who can do what | For web apps, stores and portals with sign-in: the roles and what each can do. |
| Connections | Thrive CRM, your Tellagent chatbot and the like. |
| Quality bar | Accessible to WCAG 2.2 AA, fast on a phone, found by search engines, and working in current browsers on phones, tablets and desktops. |
Please check lists anything that needs a fact only you can give. Chimp never fills one in: an unknown price reads "[price: please check]".
The spec is the page your app's name — specification in Data Management, in the folder Chimp / your app's name. Every change is a new version of the same page, so Data Management's version history keeps every earlier state.
Changing it
Type what you want in Ask to change the spec… at the top, for example "Add a page that introduces our walkers", and press Ask.
- The AI shows a Proposed change: the stories, pages and acceptance criteria it would add, change or remove. Nothing is saved yet.
- Accept makes it a new version of the spec. Not now leaves the spec as it was.
- A proposal made before someone else changed the spec cannot be accepted; ask again.
- To change an answer instead, open Your answers, change it, and press Rewrite the spec from these answers.
Approving it
Approve spec and continue, at the bottom, is shown to the people who approve specs (publishers, admins and owners, unless the app's settings narrow it). Approving:
- creates an epic in the project's Skunk Works for each area, and a story for each user story with its acceptance criteria, each linked to the spec page (the page lists them under Linked work items);
- adds the Skunk Works keys to the spec;
- adds an Overview page to the app's Documentation folder in Data Management;
- moves the app on to Design, where the AI designer starts at once.
If the answer to an approval is lost (a dropped connection), the button reads Finish approving: press it, and it finishes the same work without creating anything twice.
Once the spec is approved, changes are asked for on the Build step, with Ask for a change…. See Build.
Signed in to VeraGen? Press Guide me on any screen for a walkthrough, or ask Odin.