AI coding agents are powerful builders. They are poor receivers. The bottleneck in AI-assisted development is not generation — it is specification. Intent doesn't survive the handoff.
Git is version control. A PRD is interpreted prose. Neither closes the gap structurally. When you replace a human engineer with an AI agent, the system stops halting on ambiguity — it fabricates a plausible but invalid solution and keeps moving. By the time you catch it, the damage is in the database.
Catenator is an open standard for a structured description that precedes the build — precise enough that any agent, tool, or team can produce the same build from it. It defines three layers: Macro (the system), Meso (the domains), Micro (the operations). Backed by a JSON Schema, validated by conformance rules, producing a CLAUDE.md as the primary output artefact.
The framework document is CC BY 4.0. The JSON Schema is Apache 2.0. The vocabulary (1,113 terms across 57 specimens) is proprietary — accessed via the cloud tool at catenator.net.
parthupadhye•2h ago
Git is version control. A PRD is interpreted prose. Neither closes the gap structurally. When you replace a human engineer with an AI agent, the system stops halting on ambiguity — it fabricates a plausible but invalid solution and keeps moving. By the time you catch it, the damage is in the database.
Catenator is an open standard for a structured description that precedes the build — precise enough that any agent, tool, or team can produce the same build from it. It defines three layers: Macro (the system), Meso (the domains), Micro (the operations). Backed by a JSON Schema, validated by conformance rules, producing a CLAUDE.md as the primary output artefact.
The framework document is CC BY 4.0. The JSON Schema is Apache 2.0. The vocabulary (1,113 terms across 57 specimens) is proprietary — accessed via the cloud tool at catenator.net.