# JOB-003: Enforce Consistent Specification Structure

**Version**: 1.0
**Created**: 2025-10-25
**Status**: Active

## Context

Technical specifications and documentation follow organizational standards for structure and format:
- Required sections (Purpose, Description, Acceptance Criteria)
- Naming conventions for identifiers (REQ-001, JOB-002, ADR-003)
- Heading hierarchy and nesting rules
- Metadata fields (status, version, author)
- Reference formats and relationships

Inconsistent structure across specifications creates:
- Difficulty finding information (sections in different orders)
- Confusion about completeness (missing required sections)
- Broken tooling (scripts expecting specific formats)
- Poor maintainability (no enforced standards)
- Quality issues (incomplete specifications accepted)

Manual structure reviews are time-consuming, subjective, and inconsistent, especially as teams grow and specifications accumulate.

## Job Story

**When** I'm creating or reviewing specification documents,

**I want to** automatically validate that each specification follows the required structure and conventions,

**So that** all specifications are consistent, complete, and machine-parseable without manual structure review.

## Pains

### Current Pain Points

1. **Structural Inconsistency**: Different team members structure specs differently, making navigation and tooling difficult

2. **Missing Required Sections**: Specifications are accepted without critical sections like Acceptance Criteria or Purpose

3. **Manual Reviews**: Code reviewers must manually check structure compliance, wasting time on mechanical validation

4. **Tooling Fragility**: Scripts that parse specifications break when structure varies unexpectedly

5. **Identifier Chaos**: Without enforced patterns, identifiers become inconsistent (REQ-001 vs Req-1 vs requirement-001)

6. **Template Drift**: Even with templates, specifications drift from standards over time without enforcement

7. **Onboarding Friction**: New team members struggle to learn implicit structure rules that aren't enforced

8. **No Guardrails**: Developers can accidentally delete required sections or use wrong heading levels without detection

## Gains

### Expected Outcomes

1. **Automated Structure Validation**: Specification structure is validated automatically during development and in CI/CD

2. **Enforced Standards**: Required sections, heading levels, and identifier formats are enforced consistently

3. **Clear Error Messages**: Validation errors precisely identify what's missing or incorrect and how to fix it

4. **Template Enforcement**: Specifications must follow defined templates for different document types (Requirements, Jobs, ADRs)

5. **Reliable Tooling**: Automated tools can depend on consistent structure without defensive parsing

6. **Fast Feedback**: Developers learn structure rules immediately through validation errors, not delayed code review

7. **Onboarding Acceleration**: New team members get instant feedback about structure rules through validation

8. **Quality Assurance**: Incomplete or malformed specifications cannot pass validation or merge to main branch

9. **Flexible Standards**: Different document types (Requirements, Jobs, ADRs) can have different structure requirements

10. **Cross-Reference Validation**: Relationships between specifications (Requirements → Jobs) are validated automatically
