DISCOVERY PROMPT

HOW TO USE THIS

Send in 3 batches — don't dump 40 questions at once. Batch 1 goes with the proposal request. Batches 2–3 after they reply. Every answer becomes part of the signed spec.

BATCH 1 — THE BUSINESS (send first)

1. What exact business outcome must this integration produce? One sentence.
2. What happens today — and what is broken or manual about it?
3. Who depends on the result working?
4. What happens if the integration is wrong, late, duplicated, or down for a day?
5. Does it touch money, customer messages, orders, tickets, access, or deletions?
6. Which actions need a human to approve before they happen?

BATCH 2 — THE SYSTEMS (after Batch 1)

1. List every system involved. Who owns each one?
2. Which system is the source of truth for each type of data?
3. What can I connect to — APIs, webhooks, database, exports, or only the browser?
4. Is there a sandbox or staging environment? Or do we test carefully in production?
5. Are there existing automations, scripts, or people already touching this same data?
6. Who can grant me admin/API access, and how fast?

BATCH 3 — THE DATA & RULES (after Batch 2)

1. What moves between systems — contacts, orders, invoices, tickets, inventory?
2. What is the unique ID for a record in each system?
3. What should happen to deleted, cancelled, refunded, or duplicate records?
4. How fast must changes appear on the other side — seconds, minutes, hours?
5. How many records per day now — and in a year?
6. Who gets the alert when something fails? Who is allowed to fix and replay it?
7. Give me 3 examples that MUST work and 2 that MUST fail safely.
8. What is explicitly NOT part of this project?

WHAT YOU SEND BACK

After all three batches, you receive: the Systems Map, the Integration Spec, field mappings, and the fixed-price proposal. You sign the spec before I build. No signature, no build.