What's New in nWave v3.5

DIVERGE Wave

A new optional wave between DISCOVER and DISCUSS. Run /nw-diverge to explore multiple design directions before converging on one.

What it does: JTBD analysis, competitive research, structured brainstorming (SCAMPER + HMW), and taste evaluation (DVF + Apple/Jobs design principles). Produces a scored recommendation with dissenting case.

When to use: New products, pivots, or any time multiple approaches are viable and you haven't chosen one yet.

When to skip: Bugfixes, refactoring, or features with a clear direction.

See the DIVERGE Wave Guide for details.

DESIGN Wave: 3 Specialist Architects

/nw-design now routes to the right architect based on what you're designing:

All three support two interaction modes: Guide me (interactive questions) or Propose (autonomous analysis + options).

SSOT Document Model

Features no longer produce ~26 documents in per-wave subdirectories. Instead:

• Product SSOT (docs/product/) holds living documents that represent the current state of the product: vision, validated jobs, journeys, architecture, KPI contracts
• Feature Delta (docs/features/{id}/) holds max 6 files describing what this feature changes

Each wave reads the SSOT, produces its delta, and updates the SSOT. Documents are never duplicated across features.

See Understanding the SSOT Model for the full explanation, or Migrating to the SSOT Model for the step-by-step upgrade guide.

Document Rationalization

4 documents eliminated (never produced):

• acceptance-criteria.md — superseded by executable acceptance-tests.feature in DISTILL
• requirements.md — merged into user-stories.md as ## System Constraints
• prioritization.md — merged into story-map.md as ## Priority Rationale
• journey.feature — Gherkin embedded in journey.yaml, extracted by DISTILL

DISTILL as Conjunction Point

DISTILL now reads all three SSOT dimensions:

• Journeys — behavioral scenarios + failure modes
• Architecture — driving ports for @driving_port tagged scenarios
• KPI contracts — observability for @kpi tagged scenarios (soft gate)

Scope is bounded by the feature delta — DISTILL tests what this feature changes, not the entire SSOT.

Wave Routing

Waves are a graph, not a pipeline. Work enters at different points:

DISTILL → DELIVER is always the terminal pair. See Wave Routing Guide.