Goals

Goals give your project shape. You set a vision and author goals — what you're working toward — and DevSpec generates milestones beneath each goal that track real progress from your completed work. You stay in control: only humans can mark goals or milestones as achieved, and dismissing irrelevant ones teaches the AI what matters to you.

The Three-Layer Model

DevSpec uses a three-layer model for project goals. At the top is your Vision — a freeform text description of what the project will be when it is done. Below that are Goals — specific objectives you author and order yourself. At the bottom are Milestones — concrete markers of progress that the AI derives automatically from your completed and in-progress work.

Layers

• Vision — Freeform text describing what the finished project looks like. Set once, update as your ambitions evolve.
• Goals — User-authored objectives with optional descriptions. You create, order, and remove them yourself.
• Milestones — AI-derived markers of progress, each linked to a goal and supported by evidence from completed action items.

Setting Your Vision & Goals

Navigate to your project's Goals page (in the Plan group of the sidebar). The vision lives at the top — a single text field describing what your project will become. Goals appear below as expandable cards: title, description, success criteria, target date, and any goal dependencies. Reorder them with the up/down arrows. The AI uses vision + goals as the frame of reference when generating milestones.

How Milestone Assessment Works

DevSpec runs a milestone assessment automatically. The system looks at your recently completed action items, existing active milestones, and your vision and goals. It then updates evidence summaries on existing milestones and proposes new ones where your work implies progress that is not yet tracked. You can also trigger a manual assessment from the Goals page using the Regenerate button.

What the assessment considers

• Your project vision and goals
• All active milestones and their current evidence
• Recently completed action items (up to 20)
• Recent project reviews
• Previously dismissed milestones (so it does not recreate them)

The Goals Page

The Goals page shows your goals as expandable cards, with milestones nested beneath each goal. Each goal card displays its title, status, target date (if set), and a progress strip ("X of Y milestones achieved"). Expand a goal to see its description, success criteria, and the milestones tracking progress toward it. Milestones with no goal yet appear in an "Unscoped milestones" section beneath the goals list, with an inline link-to-goal control. Toggle "Show all" to include achieved and dismissed goals and milestones. Use the Regenerate button to trigger an immediate reassessment.

Human Sovereignty

Only humans can mark a milestone as achieved. When the AI believes a milestone may be complete, it sets a "suggest achieved" indicator on the card — a subtle prompt for you to review and confirm. Once you confirm, the milestone is marked as achieved with a timestamp and your identity. You can also lock a milestone by confirming it (human_confirmed), which prevents the AI from modifying its title or evidence in future assessments.

The AI will never mark a milestone as achieved on its own. It can only suggest — you decide.

Dismissing Milestones

If the AI proposes a milestone that is not relevant, dismiss it. You can choose a quick reason (Not relevant, Too granular, Duplicate, Other) or write your own. Dismissed milestones are fed back into future assessments so the AI learns what you do not want. It will not recreate a dismissed milestone.

Manual Milestone Creation

You can create milestones manually from the Goals page if you want to track something specific that the AI has not picked up. Manual milestones behave identically to AI-derived ones — they appear in assessments, can be linked to goals, and support the same achieve/dismiss workflow.

Suggest Achieved

When the AI assessment finds strong evidence that a milestone is complete, it marks the milestone with a "suggest achieved" indicator. This appears as a highlighted prompt on the milestone card. You can confirm to achieve the milestone or dismiss the suggestion if you disagree. The AI will not suggest the same milestone again after dismissal.

Evidence History

Each time the AI updates a milestone's evidence summary, the previous version is saved to the evidence history. You can expand the history on a milestone card to see how the evidence evolved over time — how many action items were completed and open at each assessment point. This provides a timeline of progress for each milestone.