Collecting Wishes
How departments submit their requirements through surveys, and how to manage the wish collection process as a project lead.
Collecting Wishes
Wish collection is the core of SpecGraph. This is where every department in your organization gets a structured, asynchronous opportunity to read the AI-generated PRD and tell the project team exactly what they need, what they're worried about, and what questions they have.
What Is a Wish?
A wish is a single structured requirement submitted by a department. It can be:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Feature Request | A new capability the department wants the product to have |
| Enhancement | An improvement or extension of something already in the PRD |
| Concern | A risk, constraint, or objection the department wants on the record |
| Question | A clarification the department needs before they can commit to requirements |
Every wish is associated with the department that submitted it, making it easy to trace requirements back to their source throughout the project.
How Surveys Work
When you open surveys from the Surveys page, each department in your organization receives a unique survey link. The survey experience for a department contributor looks like this:
- Review the PRD — the survey shows the full AI-generated PRD so the contributor has context before answering questions.
- Answer guided questions — the survey presents AI-generated questions per PRD section (e.g., "What security requirements does your department need for this feature?"). Contributors can answer these questions, which get converted into wishes automatically.
- Add free-form wishes — contributors can also add wishes directly, without going through a guided question. They fill out a wish form with title, description, type, priority, effort, and optional budget impact.
- Submit — once satisfied, the contributor submits the survey. After submission, the survey is locked for that department.
Opening Surveys
From the Surveys page, click Open Surveys. This:
- Creates one survey per department.
- Sends each survey link to all members of that department.
- Advances the project to the Surveying phase.
- Displays the survey deadline you set during project creation.
You can view each department's survey status from the Surveys page:
- Pending — the department has not yet started their survey.
- In Progress — the department has opened the survey but not submitted.
- Submitted — the department has completed and submitted their survey.
Monitoring Progress
As surveys come in, wishes appear in the Wishes section of your project in real time. You can filter wishes by department, type, and priority to get a sense of how input is shaping up.
Watch for:
- Departments with no submission as the deadline approaches — consider sending a reminder.
- Concerns or questions that might need clarification before you can move forward.
- High-priority feature requests that appear across multiple departments — these are strong candidates for the final spec.
Wish Voting
Any team member with project access can vote on wishes. Votes signal how much support a wish has across the team, independent of which department submitted it. Wishes with more votes carry more weight in conflict resolution and unification.
Voting is open during the entire Surveying phase and continues through conflict resolution. You can vote on wishes from the Wishes page by clicking the thumbs-up icon on any wish card.
Wish Priorities and Effort
When submitting or reviewing wishes, pay attention to two key fields:
Priority indicates urgency and importance:
- Critical — must be included; project fails without it.
- High — strongly desired; significant impact if missing.
- Medium — beneficial but negotiable.
- Low — nice to have; low impact if excluded.
Effort estimates implementation complexity:
- Small — a few hours to a day.
- Medium — a few days to a week.
- Large — one to several weeks.
- Extra Large — a month or more.
These fields help the team prioritize during conflict resolution and help the AI make better unification decisions.
Budget Impact
Wishes can optionally include a budget impact tag — High, Medium, Low, or None. This is useful for wishes that have direct cost implications, such as requiring a paid third-party integration or significant infrastructure changes.
Closing Surveys Early
If all departments have submitted before the deadline and you're ready to move forward, you can close surveys and trigger conflict detection without waiting for the deadline to pass. Navigate to the Surveys page and click Close Surveys & Detect Conflicts.
After Wish Collection
Once all (or most) surveys are submitted, the next step is running AI conflict detection. See Resolving Conflicts for what happens next.