Anchor every outcome to user evidence

The outcomes in most specs are self-evident to the author and opaque to everyone else. Six months later nobody remembers why the password reset link expires in 15 minutes. Was it a security ask, a customer complaint, or a hunch? Backing closes that loop. Every claim points back to the evidence that made it necessary, and to the person who decided the evidence counts.

The input

A product with a handful of signals already captured, plus a draft IntentSpec, even a rough one. The more claims sitting on nothing, the more this flow is worth.

The flow

1. Open the spec's Evidence section. It lists every claim in the spec: the objective, each outcome, each constraint, each edge case. Each row carries a state.

2. Read the four states.

• Backed means a signed-in person reviewed an observed signal and anchored it to that exact claim.
• Unreviewed means something is attached but nobody has judged it yet.
• Assumption means the claim rests on an AI-drafted hypothesis. An assumption can never become backing.
• No evidence means nothing is attached. This is descriptive, not a failure. Some claims are design decisions, not empirical ones.

3. Expand a claim to see the items behind it. Each item shows its tier, its origin, its source, and, for reviewed backing, the latest reviewer and the time.

4. Back a claim from the claim row. Link evidence attaches an existing signal; Add evidence captures a new one. Choosing an observed signal reviews it and anchors it to that exact claim in one action, stamped with your name and the time.

5. Deal with what is left. Items linked to the intent generally, without an exact claim, show as General / not claim-anchored and never make a claim Backed. If one of them really supports an outcome, back that outcome with it. If it does not, it stays context.

The output

A spec where a reviewer can read down the claims and see, without asking anyone, which ones rest on reviewed evidence, which ones rest on an unexamined signal, which ones are still hypotheses, and which ones nobody has evidence for.

Why this matters in 6 months

When a stakeholder asks "why did we ship this?", a backed claim answers in seconds and names the person who made the call. When an engineer asks "is this still the right approach?", the original quote is one click away. When the product changes, you can see which outcomes were backed by evidence that is now out of date.

Try it yourself

1. Open any product with signals captured in Evidence
2. Open or create an IntentSpec and open its Evidence section
3. Find a claim reading Unreviewed or No evidence
4. Use Link evidence on that claim row and pick the signal that supports it

Related

• Playbook: The Anatomy of an Agent-Ready Spec
• Use case: Turn 30 support tickets into a prioritized spec
• Use case: Find the friction pattern across 5 user interviews