Conduct a Product-Model Interview in DocsFab

Use a DocsFab product-model interview when existing evidence does not provide enough intent, rationale, terminology, audience information, or system relationships for the selected documentation target. For more information, refer to About DocsFab Workflows.

The current entry point is the agent-executed interview-product-model skill. The interview captures one participant’s model. It does not establish product truth or merge the participant’s claims into a shared model.

What You Will Produce

Create one interview directory for one participant with these artifacts:

interviews/YYYY-MM-DD-<participant>-<topic>/
├── plan.md
├── transcript.md
├── claims.md
└── model-snapshot.md

The transcript is the canonical record of what the participant said. The plan, claim records, and participant-only model snapshot are derived views that link to exact transcript evidence. Register the interview as a separate item in the participant’s stable source thread.

In This Guide

Use the following links to prepare, conduct, close, and verify the interview:

• Prerequisites
• Conduct the Interview
• Close and Register the Interview
• Verify the Result
• Next Steps

Prerequisites

Establish the product, version, model region, target documentation, known gaps, participant identity, role, and possible authority by claim kind. Do not infer authority from seniority or confidence. Register the sources and known gaps that motivate the interview, but keep the provisional synthesis hidden until free recall is complete.

Choose a text or voice capture channel and obtain explicit agreement for attribution, citation, retention, access, and the transcript boundary before substantive questioning. For voice, record whether audio exists, where it is retained, and whether the transcript is raw, corrected, or best effort. Do not imply that voice is being recorded when only transcription is available.

Create the interview plan, transcript, claim record, and model snapshot in the repository-authorized interview directory. Assign a stable source_thread_id to the participant and a distinct item_id to the interview. Keep one participant in each interview source item.

If the participant does not agree to a citable record, do not create an interview artifact from the conversation.

Conduct the Interview

Complete the following steps during the bounded interview session.

Close and Register the Interview

Complete these steps to close the interview without promoting its claims into the shared model:

Verify the Result

Confirm that the interview record contains the following:

• Participant identity, role, and authority hypothesis.
• Capture channel, consent, retention, and access boundary.
• Ordered questions, answers, reflections, corrections, and challenges.
• Exact participant content or an explicit paraphrase label.
• Separate representation, behavior, intent, and model states.
• Open questions, contradictory evidence, and next acquisition actions.

An interview can confirm a participant’s mental model. It cannot establish that the mental model matches the current implementation without independent behavior evidence.

Next Steps

After the interview passes verification:

Related Topics

Use these topics to understand the evidence, registry, and model boundaries that apply after the interview: