Refine

Improve work cards with AI-suggested enhancements.

Refine takes an existing work card and suggests improvements to make it clearer, more actionable, and better scoped. It's like having a tech lead review your card spec and offer concrete feedback — except the feedback arrives in seconds.

How Refine works

The agent analyzes your work card and generates field-level suggestions. Each suggestion targets a specific field (like the goal or document content) and includes:

  • The original text — What you currently have
  • An improved version — The AI's suggested replacement
  • An explanation — Why this change makes the card better

Running Refine

  1. Open the work card

    Navigate to the card you want to improve.

  2. Click AI → Improve specification

    Click the AI button and select Improve specification from the dropdown.

  3. Review suggestions

    The AI drawer opens with a list of suggestions, each showing the original and improved text side by side.

The Refine results panel showing two suggestions: one improving the goal field and another enriching the document content, each with original and improved text

Accepting or rejecting suggestions

Each suggestion is independent — you can cherry-pick the improvements that resonate:

  • Accept a suggestion to apply the improved text to the card
  • Reject a suggestion to keep the original
  • Review all suggestions before deciding — there's no pressure to accept everything

Refine is especially useful for cards created during Decompose. AI-generated cards often have good goals but minimal document content — Refine can flesh them out with detailed requirements and acceptance criteria.

What Refine improves

Refine typically suggests improvements in two areas:

Goal field

The goal is the most important field on a card. Refine might:

  • Make vague goals more specific ("Build dashboard" → "Build real-time analytics dashboard with filters for date range, team, and status")
  • Add measurable criteria
  • Clarify scope boundaries

Document content

The document content field holds detailed specs. Refine might:

  • Add acceptance criteria
  • Suggest a task breakdown within the card
  • Include technical considerations
  • Add references to related work

Refine reads the parent outcome's goal and context to ensure suggestions align with the broader objective. A card under "Launch mobile app v2" will get different suggestions than the same card under "Fix critical bugs."

Next Steps