Risks

Document implementation risks in plan.yaml to acknowledge potential issues before coding begins.

Enabling Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is disabled by default to reduce cognitive overhead for simple features. To enable it, set enable_risk_assessment: true in your configuration.

Project-level configuration

Add to .autospec/config.yml:

enable_risk_assessment: true

User-level configuration

Add to ~/.config/autospec/config.yml:

enable_risk_assessment: true

Environment variable

export AUTOSPEC_ENABLE_RISK_ASSESSMENT=true

When enabled, the plan stage will include instructions for generating a risks section in plan.yaml.

Schema

risks:
  - id: "RISK-001"           # Optional, format: RISK-NNN
    risk: "Database migration may cause downtime"
    likelihood: "medium"     # low | medium | high
    impact: "high"           # low | medium | high
    mitigation: "Run migration during maintenance window"

Fields

Field	Required	Description
`risk`	Yes	Description of the risk
`likelihood`	Yes	Probability: `low`, `medium`, `high`
`impact`	Yes	Severity: `low`, `medium`, `high`
`mitigation`	No	Strategy to address the risk
`id`	No	Unique identifier (RISK-NNN format)

Validation

Errors: Missing required fields, invalid enum values, malformed IDs
Warnings: High-impact risks without mitigation (non-blocking)

# Validate plan.yaml including risks
autospec artifact specs/001-feature/plan.yaml

Status Display

autospec st shows risk summary when plan.yaml contains risks:

spec: 001-dark-mode
  artifacts: [spec.yaml plan.yaml tasks.yaml]
  risks: 3 total (1 high, 2 medium)
  progress: 8/15 tasks (53%)

Notes

The risks section is optional for backward compatibility
Empty arrays are valid: risks: []
Only high-impact risks trigger mitigation warnings