How it works
We use production behavior as the starting evidence and turn it into a reviewed System Specification, which is the contract we build and prove against. The CLEAR method has five stages, Capture, Lock, Engineer, Attest and Release, and each produces an output your team can check.
The CLEAR method, step by step
Your team reviews the output of each step before the next begins. The diagram follows a single illustrative workflow.
Step 01
A guided, fully-automomous agentic AI setup connects application instrumentation, request traffic and available product analytics. We also read the schema and map reporting dependencies. Evidence accumulates with each pass, and behavior that has not been observed is recorded as a gap.
Your customers see no change.
Step 02
Owners and engineers review workflows, rules, data relationships and exceptions. When coverage and confidence meet the level agreed for the scope, that version of the System Specification is approved and locked, with testable outcomes and stated limits. Later changes go through a new approved version. Unresolved gaps lead to more capture or a narrower scope.
Your owners approve each locked version.
Step 03
Engineering agents rebuild the scoped workflow on a modern architecture against the locked specification, and engineers review the results. When production changes in a relevant way, a new version of the specification is approved and its tests are updated, so the rebuild keeps pace with the business.
Built alongside the current system, with no customer traffic.
Step 04
Legacy and modernized implementations are compared against the same specification by routing traffic through both at the same time. We check business outcomes, data and reports, permissions and performance, and resolve differences before the replacement handles any live traffic.
Differences are measured and resolved before go-live.
Step 05
We release a bounded workflow or customer cohort, with acceptance criteria, a data transition plan and rollback. Your team approves each transition, and the evidence and specification stay current for the next priority.
Your team sets the pace and can roll back at any step.
If a freeze is required
Some replacement plans need a period of stable behavior or schema during reconstruction, validation or cutover. We don't assume one, because parallel builds and incremental replacement work without a whole-system freeze. Where a freeze is needed, we agree what it covers and how much interruption the business can accept.
People and agents on one board
Business analyst, architect, developer, qa and devops AI Aagents move each item through declared stages. People step in at plan review, merge, open findings and budget decisions, and no change reaches production without your team's approval.
What you can inspect
Capture
Correlated requests, jobs, queries and outcomes, with provenance, version history and known gaps.
Lock
A locked, versioned contract of rules, data and acceptance tests, with its limits stated. Changes create a new approved version.
Engineer
Items, owners, stage and cost for each workflow, with changes submitted as reviewed pull requests in your repository.
Attest
Differences in outcomes, data, permissions and performance, and how each was resolved.
Release
Acceptance criteria, cohorts, rollback steps and a record of each transition.
Ongoing
Pages that stay current as linked work is completed, so the next renewal starts from what is already known.
Tell us about it on a 30-minute call. We'll suggest a first scope and what a technical review would need to confirm.