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Refinement playbook

Phase 5 — raising acceptable to good through directed agent passes, not open-ended polishing. Each pass is a skill with a defined scope and exit bar; the Refinement Exit gate signs it off.

The passes​

A structured walk of the ISO/IEC 25010 characteristics, each run as a named pass:

  • Performance pass — p95 latency budgets, N+1 audits, Core Web Vitals where applicable.
  • Accessibility pass — WCAG 2.2 AA audit (standard).
  • State-completeness pass — empty / error / loading states on every key screen.
  • Observability pass — log and alert quality, golden signals emitting (standard).
  • Hotspot pass — complexity/churn review of the riskiest code.

Why "directed passes" not "polish"​

"Make it better" is unbounded and never done. A named pass with an exit bar ("p95 under budget", "axe-core clean") is bounded and verifiable — an agent runs it, a human confirms the bar is met. The exit bar is signed by the lead dev + PO + SME. This is how RAPID gets quality without gold-plating.

Standards referenced: ISO/IEC 25010, Core Web Vitals.