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PRD Authoring Prompt

The PRD authoring template comes from snarktank/ai-dev-tasks's create-prd.md. Every PRD on this project (architecture brief amendment, all 11 PRDs in docs/prds/) follows the section structure that template prescribes.

Section structure

The template instructs the AI to generate these sections in order:

  1. Introduction / Overview — briefly describe the feature and the problem it solves. State the goal.
  2. Goals — list the specific, measurable objectives for this feature.
  3. User Stories — detail the user narratives describing feature usage and benefits.
  4. Functional Requirements — list the specific functionalities the feature must have. Use clear, concise language.
  5. Non-Goals (Out of Scope) — clearly state what this feature will not include to manage scope.
  6. Design Considerations (optional) — link to mockups, describe UI/UX requirements, or mention relevant components/styles if applicable.
  7. Technical Considerations (optional) — mention any known technical constraints, dependencies, or suggestions.
  8. Success Metrics — how will the success of this feature be measured?
  9. Open Questions — list any remaining questions or areas needing further clarification.

Decomposition workflow

Once a PRD is BLESSED by the 4-pass critic loop:

  1. Run snarktank/ai-dev-tasks/generate-tasks.md against the PRD to decompose its user stories into a prd.json file (one entry per ralph iteration).
  2. The phase's ralph loop reads prd.json, picks the highest-priority pending story, implements it, and marks it completed only after CI passes (the Ralph Iteration prompt governs this).

Local convention deltas

Nodewright PRDs follow this template strictly with two project-specific conventions:

  • Phase-tagged FRs — every Functional Requirement carries a [v0.1] / [v0.2] / [v1.0+] tag (or defaults to v0.1) so a reader can filter the v0.1 GA-blocking FRs from deferred ones.
  • Cross-PRD references — PRDs cite each other by number (PRD-01 §10.2) and reference the architecture brief by section (brief §17.7). The critic loop validates these refs exist.

Why this template

The Nodewright project has 11 PRDs. Without a uniform shape, downstream readers (and the critic-loop personas) lose joinability — "where do I look for failure modes?" gets a different answer per PRD. The template forces consistency at low authoring cost.

Source

The template is fetched on-demand from the snarktank repo; this page summarizes its current shape. If snarktank/ai-dev-tasks/create-prd.md evolves upstream, this page should be regenerated.