How it works
How software gets specified today, and how it works with Mochlion.
Mochlion gathers what your organization knows, finds what it doesn't, settles the contradictions, and produces an approved Build Specification. It doesn't replace Agile. It makes Agile more agile, because the sprints stop doing the discovery.
How it works today
- Idea
- Meetings
- Requirements document
- User stories
- Backlog
- Sprint
- Developer questions
- Clarification
- Rework
- repeat
- Weeks of workshops, and everyone has to be in every one
- Knowledge lost between what was said and what was written down
- Contradictions stay hidden until the code exposes them
- Developers find the unanswered questions mid-sprint
- Every clarification is a meeting, and every late answer is rework
How it works with Mochlion
- Idea
- Discovery with every expert
- Knowledge converged, conflicts settled
- Approved Build Specification
- AI-assisted build
- Agile delivery
- Each expert answers only their questions, on their own time
- Every answer is kept, with who gave it
- Contradictions are flagged for your experts to settle before the first sprint
- Developers start with more of the answers
- Sprints can spend more time building and less discovering
The expensive part of the old way is the loop at the end: questions, clarification, rework, sprint after sprint. Mochlion moves those questions to the front, where they cost an answer instead of a rewrite. Sprint planning, demos, feedback and releases stay exactly as they are.
Step by step
Seven steps, and exactly where our part ends.
01
Idea
One owner with an idea, or a sponsor with a process to automate. We capture the problem, the outcome you want, and who owns the decision.
02
Discover
Guided AI interviews with each person who knows a piece of the work. Questions go to the right expert, on their own time, from a phone or a desk. An AI agent that knows your systems can answer as an expert too.
03
Converge
AI compares answers across people. Gaps, assumptions and contradictions are found and routed to whoever can settle them.
04
Specify
Everything settles into one structured model: goals, processes, roles, rules, data, integrations, security and acceptance criteria, all linked.
05
Validate
The people who supplied the knowledge review it. Decisions are recorded with who made them and why. Only people decide, and the project sponsor signs off (or the project owner, when there is no sponsor).
06
Build Ready
A project can't reach Build Ready with open conflicts, requirements nobody can test, or an application nobody has agreed to own.
07
Handoff
Whoever builds it, your own development team or an outside practitioner, receives the Build Specification and an AI build package ready for any AI code generation tool.
Where our part ends
Handoff is the finish line.
After handoff, whoever builds it (your own team or an outside practitioner) owns the build and everything that follows. Mochlion keeps the record of what was agreed and why, and handles changes to the specification for 90 days. We don't take on running the application.
Everything after handoff: your development team or your practitioner.
The deliverable
One specification, written for two readers.
Both come from the same underlying model of your project, so they can't drift apart. When a requirement changes, both change. What is a build specification?
For the people who approve it
- Problem statement and business objectives
- Scope, and what is out of scope
- Current and future process
- Roles, requirements and business rules
- Exceptions, data, integrations and security
- Assumptions, decisions and open issues
- Acceptance criteria and the approval record
For the AI that helps build it
- Structured project context, ready for any AI code generation tool
- Data schema, entities and relationships
- APIs, integrations and access rules
- User stories with acceptance criteria
- Error handling and security requirements
- Test requirements and a definition of done
- Build sequence, with a trace ID on every item
Built for people and for machines
Plugs into your AI tools through MCP.
Mochlion isn't only a website your experts log into. It includes an MCP server, the open standard AI tools use to connect to outside systems, plus an API, so other applications and AI agents can work with a project directly.
AI coding tools read the spec directly
Connect any MCP-capable AI tool and it can pull requirements, rules, data models and acceptance criteria by trace ID while it builds, instead of working from a pasted document.
Questions flow back, not around
When the build hits something the spec doesn't answer, the question goes back into Mochlion and to the right expert, and the answer lands in the record.
Your systems can read it
Your own portfolio, backlog and governance tools can read projects, Build Readiness and finished specifications through the API, ask clarifying questions, and acknowledge a handoff. People still make every decision.
AI can be an expert, never the decider
Many AI agents now know the specifics of your application and infrastructure. Add one as an expert and it answers questions like anyone else. Only people make decisions, and only people sign off the spec.
Nothing hides in the fine print
Every item says how sure we are.
Each requirement, rule and decision is marked with where it stands, which expert it came from, and who approved it. You can always answer “why does this requirement exist?”
Nobody-owns-it, prevented
Ownership is part of Build Ready.
Before handoff, the project names a business owner, a builder, an application owner, support, security and data owners, where the code will live, where it will run, and who retires it. AI makes applications easy to create. We make sure each one has an owner.