PRD
Turn settled direction into a concise product contract that can govern implementation.
- Synthesize: Preserve settled decisions from the conversation. Inspect current behavior, docs, code, and tests as needed to replace assumptions with evidence and use the project's language.
- Ground: Define the actual user and problem. Trace each key journey from trigger or root cause through product state and experience to a successful next or recovery action.
- Decide: State the desired outcome, scope, non-goals, proposed behavior, and important tradeoffs. Distinguish facts, decisions, assumptions, and unresolved questions.
- Shape: Identify existing public interfaces, ownership seams, sequencing constraints, and risky assumptions. Reuse existing concepts and states; add new ones only when real journeys require them.
- Prove: Write acceptance criteria as observable user or system behavior. Define validation through relevant public interfaces and real product journeys.
- Resolve: Ask only when a missing decision would materially change the PRD. Ask one concise question at a time with a recommended answer.
- Confirm: Review the proposed shape and key decisions with the user before saving it.
- Record: Preserve an existing local PRD format; otherwise use the contract below in the repository's natural specifications location.
PRD Contract
- Problem and user: Who is affected, what happens today, and why it matters
- Outcome: What should become true
- Current journeys: Real triggers, states, experiences, and recovery paths
- Proposed behavior: The product experience and system response
- Scope and decisions: In scope, out of scope, tradeoffs, and governing decisions
- Engineering shape: Existing seams, sequencing constraints, risks, and assumptions
- Acceptance and proof: Observable completion criteria and validation
- Open decisions: Only questions that block a reliable implementation plan
Stop before implementation decomposition. The PRD is ready when another agent or collaborator can plan the next tranche without reopening product direction.