Before: A BRD names a stakeholder who was never interviewed.
Stakeholders come from declared context
Unknown owners become questions for the analyst instead of plausible names in a finished-looking document.
HINT for Business Analysts
Your assistant drafts quickly. HINT makes every requirement trace back.
HINT keeps plain-text requirements knowledge beside your BRDs and process documents. Your assistant reads the applicable stakeholders, rules, scope and open questions before it writes.
Where it helps
Three situations your team will recognize
Before: A requirement contradicts a business rule stated elsewhere.
Rules win over smooth prose
The conflict is surfaced with both pieces of context so the analyst can make the decision explicitly.
Before: Alternate flows are quietly merged into the happy path.
Scenarios stay separate and traceable
Main, alternate and edge paths retain their own acceptance criteria and links back to the need.
See it
A real business requirement from the demo
The Initech demo grounds a TPS-reporting requirement in an approved source.
demo-initech-requirements/processes/tps-reporting/brd.md.hint ↗
# read Approved source
../../sources/approved.md
# requirement tps-reporting-1 {#business_analyst_demo}
Approved requirement grounded in SRC-1.
# never Invented detailsWhat your assistant does next
It builds the requirement from SRC-1, keeps its ID available for traceability, and lists any missing stakeholder or acceptance detail as an open question.
What your AI assistant receives
<requirement name="tps-reporting-1">
Approved requirement grounded in SRC-1.
</requirement>
<never name="Invented details">…</never>Your boundaries stay visible
What it will never do
- Invent stakeholders, systems, figures or regulations.
- Resolve contradictions between a requirement and a business rule silently.
- Specify anything that the declared scope excludes.
FAQ
Questions business analysts ask
Can it generate a BRD?
It can help an assistant draft one from declared requirements and sources, and an emit pack can create derivable structure.
Does it replace Jira or Confluence?
No. It governs what goes into those systems; your existing tools can remain the publication and workflow layer.
Can BA and PM hintbooks coexist?
Yes. They share a compatible common core; put the most task-specific book first when a keyword overlaps.
For your technical colleague
The vocabulary
A hintbook is a vocabulary for your profession—installed, not written by you.
requirement- States a traceable functional need with a stable identifier.
nfr- Captures a measurable quality constraint such as performance or security.
bizrule- Records a business rule that requirements must not contradict.
usecase- Defines an actor, goal and trigger for an interaction.
scenario- Keeps one main or alternate flow as ordered behavior.
acceptance- States observable conditions that make a requirement complete.
trace- Links a need, requirement, use case and test identifier.
scope- Draws the boundary around what the analysis covers.
Manual setup
Bootstrap is read-only: it prints instructions for the assistant. The assistant performs the installation.
npm install -g @openhint/cli
hint config
hint add @openhint/hintbook-business-analyst
hint apply
hint verify processes/tps-reporting/brd.md
hint emit processes/tps-reporting/brd.md