interview-general

Interview (General)

1. Load [[requirements/interview-techniques]], [[methodology/simplicity-discipline]] — CIT, Laddering, CI Perspective Change, the Funnel, the Active Listening protocol, and the simplicity discipline that runs alongside every funnel level.
2. Bootstrap the interview-notes. IF .cache/<session_id>/interview-notes.md does not exist THEN render it from .templates/cache/interview-notes.md.template (substitute <session_id>). The skeleton carries the funnel level headers only; absence on a first pass is expected — never a deliberation point. IF it exists THEN it carries the prior cycle's summarized interview (a ~1000-word summary left by refresh-cycle) — read it for continuity and append the general findings beneath the Level 1 header.
3. Ask seven big-picture questions in any natural order: Who, What, Why, When/Where, Success, Failure, Out-of-scope. Do not introduce category or topic labels — let the stakeholder's own categories emerge first (priming bias).
4. Probe every answer with CIT (a concrete past incident) and Laddering (climb to a writable constraint). IF recall stalls THEN re-frame from another actor's seat (CI Perspective Change).
5. Ask the simplicity question: "What's the smallest surface that meets the need?" The stakeholder's answer names the minimum the contracts must honour; an answer that inflates scope beyond the cited need is a speculative structure, flagged here per [[methodology/simplicity-discipline]].
6. Apply Active Listening L1: paraphrase each answer before the next question.