Ask HN: How do you scope software projects and gather requirements?

Howdy HN,

I run a small software consultancy and am interested how others scope software projects, what (if any) tools you use to collect requirements (and keep them updated), and I guess the "flow" of these requirements through the lifetime of the project.

Personally I have always been pretty ad-hoc with this, using a markdown file to collect initial client requirements, Google sheets to break it into line items (for estimating), a Google doc for the proposal, and finally creating User Stories in JIRA (assuming the proposal was successful!).

I would be interested how other people manage this, and if there is a better way. Thanks a bunch.