How to Generate a Specification with the Guided Intake Form
Learn how to use the Guided Intake Form to create a detailed software specification, ensuring all necessary decisions are made upfront. This beginner-friendly guide outlines the steps and options available for generating a structured brief.
Estimated time: 4 minutes
Difficulty: Beginner
Why you'd use this
Typing a paragraph often leaves out the decisions a planner needs: language, framework, storage, authentication, target platform, packaging and testing. The specification form asks for each of those up front, with "Let the planner choose" as the default, and turns your answers into a structured brief. Plan Mode then starts from that brief, so the first planning turn is already grounded and fewer clarifying questions come back.
Before you start
Permissions required:
- Same as Plan Mode: write access to the workspace.
You'll need:
- A list of the key features the software must have.
- Any hard constraints, for example offline only, no external services, or a required language.
Steps
- Press / in the composer and choose Generate specification (guided intake), or run eLLM: Generate Specification.
- A form opens in the chat panel. Choose the Type: web app, API or backend service, CLI tool, desktop app, mobile app, library, game, or other.
- Choose the Language and type a Framework if you have one in mind, or leave the planner to decide.
- Set UI, Data storage, Authentication, Target platform, Packaging and Testing. Each has a "Let the planner choose" option.
- In Key features / requirements, list the main things it must do, one per line.
- In Constraints / non-goals, note anything it must not do.
- Pick the Build mode: Guided, Autopilot or Assist.
- Click Start planning. The brief is sent and Plan Mode begins at the chosen level.
What you should see
The brief appears as your first message, written as clean markdown with blank and default fields left out. The planner may still ask questions for anything the form did not cover, using the same inline question form as Plan Mode.
Troubleshooting
- You clicked Cancel by mistake: reopen the form from the / menu; the fields are not saved between openings, so keep your feature list in a scratch file if it is long.
- The planner chose a stack you did not want: exit Plan Mode, reopen the form and set the Language and Framework fields explicitly.
Related guides
- How to Plan and Build a Feature with Plan Mode
- How to Use the Standalone Planning Commands
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