Quick Start

Quick Start

This guide walks you through a complete end-to-end run of SpecGraph, from creating a project to exporting the final specification. It assumes you're logged in and have admin or owner permissions in your organization.

Step 1: Create a Project

From the Dashboard, click New Project (or navigate to Projects → New Project).

Fill in the project details:

• Name — a short, descriptive title (e.g., "Customer Portal Redesign").
• Description — one or two sentences explaining what the project is and why it exists.
• Template — optionally select a PRD template that matches your project type. Templates pre-fill the PRD structure with relevant sections. Available templates include Internal Portal, Data Tool, Workflow Automation, Analytics Dashboard, Integration Platform, and Customer-Facing Product.
• Survey Deadline — the date by which all departments must submit their requirements. This is shown to department contributors when they open their survey.

Click Create Project to continue.

Step 2: Upload Documents

Once your project is created, you'll land on the Documents page. This is where you upload any existing materials the AI will use to generate the initial PRD.

Accepted file types include PDF, DOCX, and TXT. Examples of useful documents:

• Existing requirements briefs or business cases
• Customer research reports
• Technical architecture notes
• Competitive analysis documents
• Previous PRDs or feature specs

Drag and drop files into the upload area, or click to browse. Files are stored securely and can be removed at any time before PRD generation.

You don't need to upload documents to proceed — but the more context you provide, the better the AI-generated PRD will be.

Step 3: Generate the PRD

Once your documents are uploaded, click Generate PRD. The AI reads your uploaded documents and produces a structured Product Requirements Document with sections covering objectives, user stories, functional requirements, and more.

PRD generation runs in the background — you'll see a processing indicator and receive a notification when it's ready. For large documents, this can take a minute or two.

Once generated, review the PRD on the PRD page. You can read each section, see the AI's interpretation of your documents, and get a sense of what's captured — and what might be missing.

Step 4: Open Surveys for Departments

When you're happy with the initial PRD, navigate to Surveys and click Open Surveys. This creates a survey for each department in your organization and sends them a link to participate.

Each department will receive a survey that:

1. Shows them the AI-generated PRD so they understand the context.
2. Asks them structured questions to capture their requirements, concerns, and priorities.
3. Collects their input as wishes — structured requirement items that feed back into the project.

You can monitor survey progress from the Surveys page, which shows how many departments have submitted and which are still pending.

Step 5: Review Wishes

As departments submit their surveys, their requirements appear in the Wishes section of your project. Each wish represents a single requirement or concern from a department.

Wishes are tagged by:

• Type — Feature Request, Enhancement, Concern, or Question.
• Priority — Critical, High, Medium, or Low.
• Effort — Small, Medium, Large, or Extra Large.
• Department — the department that submitted it.

Review the wishes across all departments. You'll start to see where different departments align and where they conflict.

Step 6: Detect Conflicts

Once surveys are complete, click Detect Conflicts. The AI compares all wishes across departments and surfaces any that are contradictory, mutually exclusive, or require trade-offs.

Conflicts are presented with:

• The two (or more) conflicting wishes side by side.
• An explanation of why they conflict.
• Suggested resolution options.

Your team works through each conflict in the Conflicts section, discussing and voting until a resolution is reached.

Step 7: Unify the PRD

After conflicts are resolved, click Generate Unified PRD. The AI takes the original PRD, all approved wishes, and all conflict resolutions, and produces a new, consolidated specification.

You'll be presented with three unification strategies to choose from:

• Conservative — prioritizes stability and minimal change to the original PRD.
• Balanced — incorporates most wishes while managing scope.
• Aggressive — maximizes feature inclusion and departmental input.

Select a strategy and confirm. The unified PRD becomes the new working version of your spec.

Step 8: Get Approvals

Navigate to Approvals. Each designated approver in your organization is shown the unified PRD and asked to formally approve or reject it with comments.

Once all required approvals are received, the PRD can be locked.

Step 9: Lock and Export

When all approvals are in, lock the PRD. A locked PRD is immutable — no further changes can be made. This is your single source of truth.

From the Export page, generate the AI-ready export. This produces a structured set of markdown files designed for use with AI coding tools like Claude Code or Codex, including:

• The full PRD in structured format
• Acceptance criteria per feature
• Agent instructions for implementation

What's Next?

Now that you've completed the workflow, explore the detailed documentation for each phase in the Workflow section, or read the Feature Deep Dives to understand capabilities like wish voting, guided survey questions, and the implementation dashboard.