diff --git a/package.json b/package.json
index c2bf4ab..98a6f9c 100644
--- a/package.json
+++ b/package.json
@@ -31,7 +31,9 @@
     "seed:test:prod": "node dist/src/database/seeder.prod.js",
     "seed:update-projects": "npx ts-node -r tsconfig-paths/register src/database/seeds/update-projects-seed.ts",
     "seed:update-projects:prod": "node dist/src/database/seeds/update-projects-seed.prod.js",
-    "seed:normalize-hero-urls": "npx ts-node -r tsconfig-paths/register src/database/seeds/normalize-hero-urls.ts"
+    "seed:normalize-hero-urls": "npx ts-node -r tsconfig-paths/register src/database/seeds/normalize-hero-urls.ts",
+    "seed:update-project-spine": "npx ts-node -r tsconfig-paths/register src/database/seeds/update-project-spine.ts",
+    "seed:update-project-spine:prod": "node dist/src/database/seeds/update-project-spine.prod.js"
   },
   "dependencies": {
     "@nestjs/axios": "^4",
diff --git a/src/database/migrations/1776000000000-add-project-spine-fields.ts b/src/database/migrations/1776000000000-add-project-spine-fields.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d056388
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/database/migrations/1776000000000-add-project-spine-fields.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+import { MigrationInterface, QueryRunner } from 'typeorm';
+
+/**
+ * Migration to add the curated "problem → role → outcome" spine fields to
+ * the projects table, used to replace the raw README dump on project detail
+ * pages with a recruiter-skimmable summary.
+ */
+export class AddProjectSpineFields1776000000000 implements MigrationInterface {
+  name = 'AddProjectSpineFields1776000000000';
+
+  public async up(queryRunner: QueryRunner): Promise<void> {
+    await queryRunner.query(
+      `ALTER TABLE \`projects\` ADD COLUMN \`problem\` TEXT NULL`,
+    );
+    await queryRunner.query(
+      `ALTER TABLE \`projects\` ADD COLUMN \`role\` TEXT NULL`,
+    );
+    await queryRunner.query(
+      `ALTER TABLE \`projects\` ADD COLUMN \`outcome\` TEXT NULL`,
+    );
+  }
+
+  public async down(queryRunner: QueryRunner): Promise<void> {
+    await queryRunner.query(`ALTER TABLE \`projects\` DROP COLUMN \`outcome\``);
+    await queryRunner.query(`ALTER TABLE \`projects\` DROP COLUMN \`role\``);
+    await queryRunner.query(`ALTER TABLE \`projects\` DROP COLUMN \`problem\``);
+  }
+}
diff --git a/src/database/seeds/update-project-spine.prod.ts b/src/database/seeds/update-project-spine.prod.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fcf8390
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/database/seeds/update-project-spine.prod.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,124 @@
+import AppDataSource from '@config/typeorm.config.prod';
+import { Project } from '@projects/entities/project.entity';
+
+/**
+ * Curated "problem → role → outcome" spine for the featured projects,
+ * replacing the raw README dump on their detail pages with a
+ * recruiter-skimmable summary. Content reviewed and approved by Carlos
+ * before being applied — see roadmap item #4.
+ */
+const projectSpines: Record<
+  string,
+  { problem: string; role: string; outcome: string }
+> = {
+  'space-server': {
+    problem:
+      'Wanted independence from third-party providers for core infrastructure (mail, hosting, monitoring) and full control over the data — outgrew a home-laptop server as usage grew.',
+    role: 'Solo owner/operator — designed, deployed, and hardened the entire stack (Traefik edge, mail, apps, observability, alerting), including incident response.',
+    outcome:
+      '20 containers across 12 public subdomains on a single Hetzner VPS, replacing third-party mail/hosting with a self-managed stack: Traefik + Let’s Encrypt, docker-mailserver, Prometheus/Grafana/Alertmanager with Discord alerting, and Uptime Kuma.',
+  },
+  clarify: {
+    problem:
+      'Legal contracts (leases, ToS, business agreements) are dense and jargon-heavy, leaving most people unable to spot risky or unfavorable terms without paying for a lawyer.',
+    role: 'Solo, end-to-end — the Nuxt 3/Nitro full stack, a 3-tier OpenAI analysis strategy, Supabase auth with Row Level Security, Stripe-based credit billing, and a BullMQ/Redis async job queue.',
+    outcome:
+      'A working end-to-end pipeline — upload → validated PDF → queued job → AI analysis → realtime dashboard — with a functioning credit/billing loop and production security controls (RLS, rate limiting, SSRF protection), deployed via Docker/Traefik with automated CI release/deploy.',
+  },
+  'nova-id': {
+    problem:
+      'Off-the-shelf identity providers (Auth0, Cognito) are black boxes; building on the Ory Stack instead meant owning the session validation, permission modeling, and Zero Trust enforcement rather than trusting a vendor SaaS.',
+    role: 'Sole author — designed the Zero Trust topology (isolated Docker networks, no exposed internal ports), wrote all 15 Oathkeeper access rules, and built a dual RBAC model (platform vs. app roles).',
+    outcome:
+      'A working Zero Trust gateway where Oathkeeper is the only public bridge to the internal Ory services (Kratos, Hydra, Keto), with 3 integrated Vue 3 frontends and full self-service identity flows — login, recovery, TOTP, OAuth2 consent — working end-to-end.',
+  },
+  kovia: {
+    problem:
+      'Pet-rescue organizations were managing adoption applications through unstructured DMs and spreadsheets, with no way to flag risky applicants or track adoption history.',
+    role: 'Designed and built the full-stack platform solo — a NestJS/Prisma/PostgreSQL backend with row-level-security multi-tenancy, a rule-based 0–100 applicant scoring engine, and a Nuxt 4 frontend with Google OAuth.',
+    outcome:
+      'A 356-test backend suite (green, CI-gated) with regression tests added specifically after two real bugs surfaced during development (an RLS-bypass mistype, a silently-dropped notification); multi-tenant isolation and adopter dashboards work end-to-end, piloted with a real rescue org in El Salvador.',
+  },
+  nightwire: {
+    problem:
+      'Building consistent, production-quality dark-mode UIs required a coherent token system, not one-off CSS per project — existing bases didn’t enforce the constraints wanted (pure-black surfaces, no decorative color, AI-agent-readable specs).',
+    role: 'Sole author/maintainer — designed the token system and component CSS, wrote the AI-readable spec and a Claude Code skill for it, built the CLI installer, and set the versioning/migration discipline.',
+    outcome:
+      'Published and versioned on npm as a stable, semver-disciplined package (19 git tags from v1.0.0 through v2.0.1), and dogfooded in production as the actual design system of this portfolio site.',
+  },
+  lumira: {
+    problem:
+      'Claude Code and Qwen Code ship a bare statusline showing only model name and directory, leaving session-critical signals — context-window pressure, burn rate, rate-limit quota — invisible until you hit a wall.',
+    role: 'Solo build — a zero-runtime-dependency TypeScript CLI with 7 themes, powerline rendering, WCAG-AA contrast enforced in CI, and dual Claude Code/Qwen Code support.',
+    outcome:
+      'Shipped 15+ releases with a maintained changelog, calibrated against real captured statusline payloads (e.g. the auto-compact threshold tuned to an observed trigger point), and actively downloaded via npm.',
+  },
+  'myths-and-legends-api': {
+    problem:
+      'Salvadoran oral folklore — La Ciguanaba, La Llorona, El Cadejo, and others — exists as scattered oral tradition rather than structured, queryable data.',
+    role: 'Solo — designed the domain-driven data model and built the FastAPI/PostgreSQL REST API, including auth, migrations, and seed data.',
+    outcome:
+      'A working FastAPI service (OpenAPI docs, JWT auth, CRUD and search endpoints) seeded with named Salvadoran folklore entities, each tagged with category, type, location, and cited sources.',
+  },
+  'portfolio-api': {
+    problem:
+      'cativo.dev needed a backend for project/contact data and an AI chat assistant that answers visitor questions grounded in a canonical profile — while resisting prompt injection and profile-leak attempts.',
+    role: 'Solo, full backend and ops — the NestJS API, TypeORM/Postgres data layer, JWT + API-key auth, Docker deployment, and the security/rate-limiting hardening, end to end.',
+    outcome:
+      'A production API with 32+ dated releases and 96%+ line coverage; JWT auth, an API-key auth path, and tiered per-endpoint rate limiting are all live in this exact service.',
+  },
+};
+
+/* v8 ignore start */
+async function updateProjectSpines(): Promise<void> {
+  const dataSource = await AppDataSource.initialize();
+  const queryRunner = dataSource.createQueryRunner();
+  await queryRunner.connect();
+  await queryRunner.startTransaction();
+
+  try {
+    const projects = await queryRunner.manager.find(Project);
+    console.log(`Found ${projects.length} projects`);
+
+    let updatedCount = 0;
+
+    for (const project of projects) {
+      const spine = projectSpines[project.title];
+
+      // Only fill in currently-missing fields — never overwrite a value that
+      // was set some other way (e.g. a manual edit already made in prod).
+      if (
+        spine &&
+        (project.problem == null ||
+          project.role == null ||
+          project.outcome == null)
+      ) {
+        await queryRunner.manager.update(Project, project.id, {
+          problem: project.problem ?? spine.problem,
+          role: project.role ?? spine.role,
+          outcome: project.outcome ?? spine.outcome,
+        });
+        updatedCount++;
+        console.log(`Updated spine for project: ${project.title}`);
+      }
+    }
+
+    await queryRunner.commitTransaction();
+    console.log(`\nUpdate complete: ${updatedCount} project(s) updated`);
+  } catch (error) {
+    await queryRunner.rollbackTransaction();
+    console.error('Update failed, rolled back:', error);
+    throw error;
+  } finally {
+    await queryRunner.release();
+    await dataSource.destroy();
+  }
+}
+
+updateProjectSpines()
+  .then(() => process.exit(0))
+  .catch((error) => {
+    console.error('Update error:', error);
+    process.exit(1);
+  });
+/* v8 ignore stop */
diff --git a/src/database/seeds/update-project-spine.ts b/src/database/seeds/update-project-spine.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd6b9d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/database/seeds/update-project-spine.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,124 @@
+import AppDataSource from '@config/typeorm.config';
+import { Project } from '@projects/entities/project.entity';
+
+/**
+ * Curated "problem → role → outcome" spine for the featured projects,
+ * replacing the raw README dump on their detail pages with a
+ * recruiter-skimmable summary. Content reviewed and approved by Carlos
+ * before being applied — see roadmap item #4.
+ */
+const projectSpines: Record<
+  string,
+  { problem: string; role: string; outcome: string }
+> = {
+  'space-server': {
+    problem:
+      'Wanted independence from third-party providers for core infrastructure (mail, hosting, monitoring) and full control over the data — outgrew a home-laptop server as usage grew.',
+    role: 'Solo owner/operator — designed, deployed, and hardened the entire stack (Traefik edge, mail, apps, observability, alerting), including incident response.',
+    outcome:
+      '20 containers across 12 public subdomains on a single Hetzner VPS, replacing third-party mail/hosting with a self-managed stack: Traefik + Let’s Encrypt, docker-mailserver, Prometheus/Grafana/Alertmanager with Discord alerting, and Uptime Kuma.',
+  },
+  clarify: {
+    problem:
+      'Legal contracts (leases, ToS, business agreements) are dense and jargon-heavy, leaving most people unable to spot risky or unfavorable terms without paying for a lawyer.',
+    role: 'Solo, end-to-end — the Nuxt 3/Nitro full stack, a 3-tier OpenAI analysis strategy, Supabase auth with Row Level Security, Stripe-based credit billing, and a BullMQ/Redis async job queue.',
+    outcome:
+      'A working end-to-end pipeline — upload → validated PDF → queued job → AI analysis → realtime dashboard — with a functioning credit/billing loop and production security controls (RLS, rate limiting, SSRF protection), deployed via Docker/Traefik with automated CI release/deploy.',
+  },
+  'nova-id': {
+    problem:
+      'Off-the-shelf identity providers (Auth0, Cognito) are black boxes; building on the Ory Stack instead meant owning the session validation, permission modeling, and Zero Trust enforcement rather than trusting a vendor SaaS.',
+    role: 'Sole author — designed the Zero Trust topology (isolated Docker networks, no exposed internal ports), wrote all 15 Oathkeeper access rules, and built a dual RBAC model (platform vs. app roles).',
+    outcome:
+      'A working Zero Trust gateway where Oathkeeper is the only public bridge to the internal Ory services (Kratos, Hydra, Keto), with 3 integrated Vue 3 frontends and full self-service identity flows — login, recovery, TOTP, OAuth2 consent — working end-to-end.',
+  },
+  kovia: {
+    problem:
+      'Pet-rescue organizations were managing adoption applications through unstructured DMs and spreadsheets, with no way to flag risky applicants or track adoption history.',
+    role: 'Designed and built the full-stack platform solo — a NestJS/Prisma/PostgreSQL backend with row-level-security multi-tenancy, a rule-based 0–100 applicant scoring engine, and a Nuxt 4 frontend with Google OAuth.',
+    outcome:
+      'A 356-test backend suite (green, CI-gated) with regression tests added specifically after two real bugs surfaced during development (an RLS-bypass mistype, a silently-dropped notification); multi-tenant isolation and adopter dashboards work end-to-end, piloted with a real rescue org in El Salvador.',
+  },
+  nightwire: {
+    problem:
+      'Building consistent, production-quality dark-mode UIs required a coherent token system, not one-off CSS per project — existing bases didn’t enforce the constraints wanted (pure-black surfaces, no decorative color, AI-agent-readable specs).',
+    role: 'Sole author/maintainer — designed the token system and component CSS, wrote the AI-readable spec and a Claude Code skill for it, built the CLI installer, and set the versioning/migration discipline.',
+    outcome:
+      'Published and versioned on npm as a stable, semver-disciplined package (19 git tags from v1.0.0 through v2.0.1), and dogfooded in production as the actual design system of this portfolio site.',
+  },
+  lumira: {
+    problem:
+      'Claude Code and Qwen Code ship a bare statusline showing only model name and directory, leaving session-critical signals — context-window pressure, burn rate, rate-limit quota — invisible until you hit a wall.',
+    role: 'Solo build — a zero-runtime-dependency TypeScript CLI with 7 themes, powerline rendering, WCAG-AA contrast enforced in CI, and dual Claude Code/Qwen Code support.',
+    outcome:
+      'Shipped 15+ releases with a maintained changelog, calibrated against real captured statusline payloads (e.g. the auto-compact threshold tuned to an observed trigger point), and actively downloaded via npm.',
+  },
+  'myths-and-legends-api': {
+    problem:
+      'Salvadoran oral folklore — La Ciguanaba, La Llorona, El Cadejo, and others — exists as scattered oral tradition rather than structured, queryable data.',
+    role: 'Solo — designed the domain-driven data model and built the FastAPI/PostgreSQL REST API, including auth, migrations, and seed data.',
+    outcome:
+      'A working FastAPI service (OpenAPI docs, JWT auth, CRUD and search endpoints) seeded with named Salvadoran folklore entities, each tagged with category, type, location, and cited sources.',
+  },
+  'portfolio-api': {
+    problem:
+      'cativo.dev needed a backend for project/contact data and an AI chat assistant that answers visitor questions grounded in a canonical profile — while resisting prompt injection and profile-leak attempts.',
+    role: 'Solo, full backend and ops — the NestJS API, TypeORM/Postgres data layer, JWT + API-key auth, Docker deployment, and the security/rate-limiting hardening, end to end.',
+    outcome:
+      'A production API with 32+ dated releases and 96%+ line coverage; JWT auth, an API-key auth path, and tiered per-endpoint rate limiting are all live in this exact service.',
+  },
+};
+
+/* v8 ignore start */
+async function updateProjectSpines(): Promise<void> {
+  const dataSource = await AppDataSource.initialize();
+  const queryRunner = dataSource.createQueryRunner();
+  await queryRunner.connect();
+  await queryRunner.startTransaction();
+
+  try {
+    const projects = await queryRunner.manager.find(Project);
+    console.log(`Found ${projects.length} projects`);
+
+    let updatedCount = 0;
+
+    for (const project of projects) {
+      const spine = projectSpines[project.title];
+
+      // Only fill in currently-missing fields — never overwrite a value that
+      // was set some other way (e.g. a manual edit already made in prod).
+      if (
+        spine &&
+        (project.problem == null ||
+          project.role == null ||
+          project.outcome == null)
+      ) {
+        await queryRunner.manager.update(Project, project.id, {
+          problem: project.problem ?? spine.problem,
+          role: project.role ?? spine.role,
+          outcome: project.outcome ?? spine.outcome,
+        });
+        updatedCount++;
+        console.log(`Updated spine for project: ${project.title}`);
+      }
+    }
+
+    await queryRunner.commitTransaction();
+    console.log(`\nUpdate complete: ${updatedCount} project(s) updated`);
+  } catch (error) {
+    await queryRunner.rollbackTransaction();
+    console.error('Update failed, rolled back:', error);
+    throw error;
+  } finally {
+    await queryRunner.release();
+    await dataSource.destroy();
+  }
+}
+
+updateProjectSpines()
+  .then(() => process.exit(0))
+  .catch((error) => {
+    console.error('Update error:', error);
+    process.exit(1);
+  });
+/* v8 ignore stop */
diff --git a/src/projects/dto/create-project.dto.spec.ts b/src/projects/dto/create-project.dto.spec.ts
index c5bf8db..20eb215 100644
--- a/src/projects/dto/create-project.dto.spec.ts
+++ b/src/projects/dto/create-project.dto.spec.ts
@@ -369,5 +369,68 @@ describe('CreateProjectDto', () => {
       expect(errors.length).toBeGreaterThan(0);
       expect(errors.some((e) => e.property === 'features')).toBe(true);
     });
+
+    it('should accept optional problem/role/outcome as strings', async () => {
+      const dto = plainToClass(CreateProjectDto, {
+        title: 'My Project',
+        description: 'A great project description',
+        shortDescription: 'Short desc',
+        repoUrl: 'https://github.com/user/repo',
+        problem: 'The problem being solved',
+        role: "Carlos's role on this project",
+        outcome: 'The concrete result',
+      });
+
+      const errors = await validate(dto);
+      expect(errors).toHaveLength(0);
+    });
+
+    it('should accept minimal input without problem/role/outcome (all optional)', async () => {
+      const dto = plainToClass(CreateProjectDto, {
+        title: 'My Project',
+        description: 'A great project description',
+        shortDescription: 'Short desc',
+        repoUrl: 'https://github.com/user/repo',
+      });
+
+      const errors = await validate(dto);
+      expect(errors).toHaveLength(0);
+      expect(dto.problem).toBeUndefined();
+      expect(dto.role).toBeUndefined();
+      expect(dto.outcome).toBeUndefined();
+    });
+
+    it.each(['problem', 'role', 'outcome'])(
+      'should enforce maxLength on %s (500)',
+      async (field) => {
+        const dto = plainToClass(CreateProjectDto, {
+          title: 'My Project',
+          description: 'A great project description',
+          shortDescription: 'Short desc',
+          repoUrl: 'https://github.com/user/repo',
+          [field]: 'a'.repeat(501),
+        });
+
+        const errors = await validate(dto);
+        expect(errors.length).toBeGreaterThan(0);
+        expect(errors.some((e) => e.property === field)).toBe(true);
+      },
+    );
+
+    it.each(['problem', 'role', 'outcome'])(
+      'should accept %s at maxLength boundary (500)',
+      async (field) => {
+        const dto = plainToClass(CreateProjectDto, {
+          title: 'My Project',
+          description: 'A great project description',
+          shortDescription: 'Short desc',
+          repoUrl: 'https://github.com/user/repo',
+          [field]: 'a'.repeat(500),
+        });
+
+        const errors = await validate(dto);
+        expect(errors).toHaveLength(0);
+      },
+    );
   });
 });
diff --git a/src/projects/dto/create-project.dto.ts b/src/projects/dto/create-project.dto.ts
index 3a39d48..3de7866 100644
--- a/src/projects/dto/create-project.dto.ts
+++ b/src/projects/dto/create-project.dto.ts
@@ -94,4 +94,31 @@ export class CreateProjectDto {
     default: ProjectStatus.COMPLETED,
   })
   status?: ProjectStatus;
+
+  @IsOptional()
+  @IsString()
+  @MaxLength(500)
+  @ApiPropertyOptional({
+    description: 'The problem this project solves (curated detail-page spine)',
+    maxLength: 500,
+  })
+  problem?: string;
+
+  @IsOptional()
+  @IsString()
+  @MaxLength(500)
+  @ApiPropertyOptional({
+    description: "Carlos's role on this project (curated detail-page spine)",
+    maxLength: 500,
+  })
+  role?: string;
+
+  @IsOptional()
+  @IsString()
+  @MaxLength(500)
+  @ApiPropertyOptional({
+    description: 'The concrete outcome/result (curated detail-page spine)',
+    maxLength: 500,
+  })
+  outcome?: string;
 }
diff --git a/src/projects/dto/project-response.dto.ts b/src/projects/dto/project-response.dto.ts
index 3befb8e..72d8c2f 100644
--- a/src/projects/dto/project-response.dto.ts
+++ b/src/projects/dto/project-response.dto.ts
@@ -42,6 +42,24 @@ export class ProjectResponseDto {
   @ApiProperty({ description: 'Key features', type: [String] })
   features: string[];
 
+  @ApiProperty({
+    description: 'The problem this project solves',
+    required: false,
+  })
+  problem?: string;
+
+  @ApiProperty({
+    description: "Carlos's role on this project",
+    required: false,
+  })
+  role?: string;
+
+  @ApiProperty({
+    description: 'The concrete outcome/result',
+    required: false,
+  })
+  outcome?: string;
+
   @ApiProperty({
     description: 'Project status',
     enum: ProjectStatus,
@@ -73,6 +91,9 @@ export class ProjectResponseDto {
     dto.content = project.content;
     dto.heroImage = project.heroImage;
     dto.features = project.features ?? [];
+    dto.problem = project.problem ?? undefined;
+    dto.role = project.role ?? undefined;
+    dto.outcome = project.outcome ?? undefined;
     dto.status = project.status ?? ProjectStatus.COMPLETED;
     dto.createdAt = project.createdAt;
     dto.updatedAt = project.updatedAt;
diff --git a/src/projects/entities/project.entity.ts b/src/projects/entities/project.entity.ts
index 1f3e344..79b5a0f 100644
--- a/src/projects/entities/project.entity.ts
+++ b/src/projects/entities/project.entity.ts
@@ -37,6 +37,15 @@ export class Project extends BaseEntity {
   @Column({ type: 'json', nullable: true })
   features: string[];
 
+  @Column({ type: 'text', nullable: true })
+  problem: string | null;
+
+  @Column({ type: 'text', nullable: true })
+  role: string | null;
+
+  @Column({ type: 'text', nullable: true })
+  outcome: string | null;
+
   @Index()
   @Column({
     type: 'enum',
diff --git a/src/projects/projects.controller.spec.ts b/src/projects/projects.controller.spec.ts
index b1e81bc..38a3654 100644
--- a/src/projects/projects.controller.spec.ts
+++ b/src/projects/projects.controller.spec.ts
@@ -35,6 +35,9 @@ describe('ProjectsController', () => {
     content: 'Project content in Markdown',
     heroImage: 'https://example.com/hero.png',
     features: ['Feature 1', 'Feature 2'],
+    problem: null,
+    role: null,
+    outcome: null,
     status: ProjectStatus.COMPLETED,
     createdAt: new Date('2023-01-01T00:00:00Z'),
     updatedAt: new Date('2023-01-01T00:00:00Z'),