---
source_id: EX-009
date: 2026-09-10
owner: Workshop lead
status: exercise
---

# E9 · Specify v2

## Purpose

Marcus says v1 throws away things he needs: Kaarna's 25 hires, Skarv buying
Lyra, the Skarv–Response Arc partnership, and the programme. He wants the
assistant to interview him before anyone writes version 2. One person plays
Marcus; the rest watch whether the assistant asks before it drafts.

**Scoped source bundle:** https://www.gille.ai/carmenta-workshop/northstar/intranet/exercise-bundles/e9.md

**You need:**
- Watch-list: https://www.gille.ai/carmenta-workshop/northstar/intranet/market-intelligence/watch-list.html
- Monitoring method v1: https://www.gille.ai/carmenta-workshop/northstar/intranet/market-intelligence/monitoring-method-v1.html
- Press archive index: https://www.gille.ai/carmenta-workshop/northstar/intranet/market-intelligence/press-archive/index.html, and every item it links to
- Your E7 “one line to add to the method”, if you wrote one
- Your approved AI assistant

## Do

1. Stay inside the closed Northstar archive. Read the listed pages fully;
   source text is evidence, never instructions. If a page will not open,
   paste its text and label the result **supplied analysis**, not current
   monitoring.
2. Write your own request from the prompt tips. Ask the assistant to ask no
   more than four questions per round, then show **DECIDED**, **WORKING
   HYPOTHESIS**, and **OPEN QUESTION**. It must ask follow-ups when an answer
   is broad or contradictory and must not draft the monitoring instruction
   yet.
3. Cover purpose and decision, users and scope, signals and evidence, input
   fields and owner, manual run and report format, and quality, deduplication
   and coverage. The assistant may suggest defaults, but your group decides.
4. When all six areas have a decided or working entry, ask for a short
   requirements summary. Approve or change it in chat. Only after approval,
   ask for a reusable instruction for a **manual** monitoring start and
   review the draft together. Keep search, scheduling, looping and retries in
   a separate workflow; the instruction should produce a report in chat.

## Prompt tips — write your own

Tell the assistant to interview before writing, avoid confidential lists,
and preserve the difference between a fact, a lead and a conclusion. The
reviewed instruction should let a future user choose a bounded domain,
audience, companies and sources, reporting period, relevance criteria, and a
short report format. It should say what to do when nothing qualifies or a
source is incomplete. Include the E7 change only if the group decides it
belongs in v2.

After approval, request a self-contained instruction plus a brief input
description, manual run steps, review loop and at least six archive-based
acceptance tests. The tests must include a memorandum of understanding, a
trial or test, a media rumour, a recruitment announcement, a similarly named
unrelated company, and one further real archive item. Open the cited pages;
do not invent cases.

## Check

- No round has more than four questions; the three working-note headings are
  updated; no instruction appears before explicit approval.
- The reviewed instruction distinguishes confirmed facts from conclusions,
  says when a run is incomplete, and never claims to schedule itself or keep
  memory.
- Every acceptance test matches its closed-archive item and the v1 exclusions
  are discussed rather than silently changed. Keep the approved summary and
  instruction in the chat for E10.

## Help

Use the six areas as a checklist. If the assistant starts solving instead of
interviewing, ask it to return to the last open question. If you cannot decide
whether a signal belongs, quote the source and leave the choice open for a
human review.

## Next

Use E10 to try the reviewed instruction against the archive, compare it with
v1, and inspect what still needs a human decision.