Versonas — discipline challenge agents

Versonas are AI challenge agents that pressure-test work from discipline-specific perspectives. They are not team roles — they are challenge functions that strengthen thinking before costly commitments.

How Versonas work

A decision point is reached (refinement, pre-build, pre-release, architecture choice).
The team identifies which discipline perspectives are relevant.
The appropriate Versonas are invoked (via Cursor rule or manual prompt).
Each Versona challenges the work from its discipline's perspective, producing structured output.
The team acts on concerns or accepts the risk, capturing the decision in the Ember Log.

Bridge-awareness

Each Versona template references its discipline's bridge document (*-SDLC-PDLC-BRIDGE.md). The bridge contains a phase alignment table that tells the Versona agent when its discipline is most relevant:

Architecture Versona is strongest at phases A–C (discover, specify, design), lighter at D–F.
Testing Versona activates at phases D–E (build, verify) and during Assay Gate.
BA Versona is strongest at phases A–B (discover, specify) and at Review.

This phase-awareness lets Versonas calibrate challenge intensity based on the current Spark's phase prefix (discover:, build:, verify:, etc.).

Template catalog

Engineering family (7 disciplines)

Template	Discipline	Core challenge
`versona-se.mdc.template`	Software Engineering	Are CS fundamentals and craft practices sound?
`versona-architecture.mdc.template`	Software Architecture	Is this structurally sound and maintainable?
`versona-devops.mdc.template`	DevOps	Can we deliver and operate this reliably?
`versona-testing.mdc.template`	Testing & QA	Can we prove this works correctly?
`versona-frontend.mdc.template`	Frontend	Is the web UI fast, accessible, and maintainable?
`versona-mobile.mdc.template`	Mobile	Is the mobile experience performant and reliable?
`versona-iot.mdc.template`	Embedded / IoT	Is this reliable and safe for constrained environments?

Data family (2 disciplines)

Template	Discipline	Core challenge
`versona-bigdata.mdc.template`	Big Data & Data Engineering	Is data engineered, governed, and processed correctly?
`versona-datascience.mdc.template`	Data Science & ML	Are models valid, reproducible, and responsible?

Product family (5 disciplines)

Template	Discipline	Core challenge
`versona-product-management.mdc.template`	Product Management	Are we building the right product for the right market?
`versona-ba.mdc.template`	Business Analysis	Do we understand what stakeholders need?
`versona-ux.mdc.template`	UX / UI Design	Is this usable, desirable, and accessible?
`versona-marketing.mdc.template`	Marketing	Can we acquire, engage, and retain users?
`versona-cs.mdc.template`	Customer Success	Will users achieve their goals?

Governance family (1 discipline)

Template	Discipline	Core challenge
`versona-pm.mdc.template`	Project Management	Are we delivering within constraints?

Cross-cutting (2 disciplines)

Template	Discipline	Core challenge
`versona-security.mdc.template`	Security	Is this safe from attacks and breaches?
`versona-compliance.mdc.template`	Compliance	Does this meet regulatory obligations?

Family aggregators

Template	Activates
`versona-family-engineering.mdc.template`	All 7 engineering Versonas
`versona-family-data.mdc.template`	Both data Versonas
`versona-family-product.mdc.template`	All 5 product Versonas
`versona-all.mdc.template`	Master routing — suggests which Versonas based on context

Adopting Versonas in a consuming repo

Copy the templates you need to .cursor/rules/ in your repo (remove .template suffix).
Update globs: in each rule to match your project's file structure.
Configure which Versonas are active in forge.config.yaml (via the setup wizard).
Use family aggregators to activate discipline groups without configuring each individually.

See VERSONA-CONTRACT.md for the standard structure every Versona rule must follow.

Navigate