Interview question bank (per view)

The questions the design interview asks, in interview order. Each answer becomes the block in its *maps to* column immediately — write, wcl check, then move on. Optional rows are asked only when relevant. (These are data — interview_q blocks — so tooling can walk them.)

§ 1Overview / decisions

Question	Maps to
What is the system, in one sentence — and what business problem makes it worth building?	wad.summary / wad.description
How will you know it succeeded? (measurable criteria if possible)	wad.description / article :overview
Rank the qualities that matter: performance, availability, security, cost, time-to-market.	article :overview (drives later trade-off ADRs)
What is already fixed — mandated stack, compliance regime, budget, deadline, existing contracts?	adr (one per constraint that forecloses options)
What decisions have already been made, and why?	adr (status :accepted, dated)
Who funds it, who approves changes, who builds it, who operates it, who gets paged?	stakeholder + raci_entry rows per activity

§ 2Personas

Question	Maps to
Who USES the system — every distinct kind of user, including service accounts and AI agents that consume it? (Not the people who build or operate it — those are view-1 stakeholders.)	persona (kind :human / :service / :ai_agent); builders/operators → stakeholder
For each persona: what are they trying to get done? What volume of them do you expect?	persona.goals / persona.body
What SECURITY CONTROL gates each persona's access — SSO, approved signup, admin invite — and who approves? (Freely installing the software is not access control: no control means no access_grant blocks at all.)	persona access_grant (method, approver) — or nothing
For each persona: what are the typical things they do with the system, end to end? Pick a selection broad enough to exercise most of their usage — each becomes a step-by-step flow (and doubles as a user-acceptance test).	use_case (steps, from -> to flow, preconditions, outcome)

§ 3System context

Question	Maps to
Which systems make up the solution — the boxes an outsider would see — with one line each?	system
Which third-party systems does it integrate with to do its job (identity, payments, data feeds, notifications…)? Where it is hosted/built comes later, in infrastructure.	external_system (stub) + relation; hosting/CI/CDN → infra_node (view 5)
For each connection: which direction, what protocol, what data crosses, sync or async?	relation (kind, protocol, data)
Which persona uses which system/container?	relation (persona → container, kind :uses)

§ 4External systems

Question	Maps to
Per external system: who owns/runs it (vendor, team), and how critical is an outage to you?	external_system.vendor / .criticality
Who do you call when it breaks — support contact and escalation path?	support_contact
Connection details per environment: URLs, IPs, queue names, auth method?	endpoint (kind url/ip/config)
Where do the API docs / OpenAPI specs / integration references live?	api_ref
What data classification crosses the boundary, and where do the secrets live?	security_note

§ 5Systems (C4)

Question	Maps to
Per system: what are the independently deployable/runnable units — services, databases, web apps, CLIs, queues, batch jobs — with runtime/language for each?	container (kind, technology)
Inside each significant container: what are the major parts and their responsibilities?	component
Is any public interface fixed up front — a DB schema, an API contract, a key protocol? (Code items are otherwise extractor territory once code exists.)	code_item (:db_schema / :api)	optional
For each user-facing container: every screen/page, what is on it, and how the screens flow into each other. Spec them out completely — wireframe each one.	screen (wireframe body, nav_to)
For each CLI container: every command and subcommand, its arguments/flags, and what it prints — mock the important outputs.	screen per command (route = the invocation, terminal body)
For each TUI container: every screen/panel, its widgets, and the navigation between them — mock each with terminal/TUI blocks.	screen per panel (terminal/tui body, nav_to)

§ 6Domain

Question	Maps to
What are the business objects in this system — the nouns the business itself uses when talking about it?	domain_object
Per object: which fields matter, and how do objects relate (one-to-many, references)?	field + domain_rel children
What invariants or lifecycle rules must always hold?	domain_object.body / standard (kind :business)
Which terms does the team use that an outsider would misread?	term

§ 7Infrastructure

Question	Maps to
Which environments exist (local, CI, dev, staging, prod, DR) and in what promotion order?	environment (order, promotes_to)
Where does each container run per environment — cloud/k8s/VMs/serverless/SaaS — and what is shared between environments?	infra_node (parent nesting, environments) + deploy_target
What are the availability/scaling arrangements, and what gets backed up, how?	infra_node.notes / article :infrastructure	optional

§ 8Build & deploy

Question	Maps to
One repo or many? What lives where inside them?	repository (+ repo_path rows)
What CI runs on a change, in what stages, and what gates promotion to each environment? Who approves?	pipeline (+ stages: gates, next, environment)
How are versions numbered, where are artifacts stored, and what shipped in past releases? (Releases are extractor territory — git tags / the platform's releases API.)	release (via an extractor) + pipeline.body / article :build_deploy
How does a new developer get from clone to running tests?	sop (kind :dev) or repository.body

§ 9Documentation

Question	Maps to
What will the project publish to be read — docs site, rendered book, agent skill, README — and for each: where is the source authored, what builds it, where is it hosted, and which personas is it for?	doc_item (source, built_by, hosted_on, url, audience)

§ 10System admin

Question	Maps to
What routine operations exist — deploys, secret rotation, restores, user admin?	sop (kind :operations / :runbook)
What happens when it breaks at 3am — alerting destination, incident steps, escalation?	sop (kind :incident)
How are changes approved and rolled back?	sop (kind :change)

§ 11Standards & rules

Question	Maps to
What coding/style standards apply, and what enforces each (CI, linter, review)?	standard (kind :coding / :style) + rule (enforced_by)
Which business or regulatory rules constrain behaviour (retention, audit, licensing)?	standard (kind :business / :security)