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Specification as Prompt

· 2 min read

Users interact with AIs through prompts. Specific and detailed prompts should cause an AI to formulate better results. My project goal is a working phone application which will support two types of regular users as well as scheduling, and communication between users.

My idea is to write a detailed application specification that might be used by any software team. The specification should contain these main parts:

  • User stakeholder requirements.
  • Functional requirements for the UI itself that includes Figma or other visual aids.
  • Nonfunctional requirements that define how the system should perform.

Remember, this application is a project for a non-technical client. So, the specification is also the means to review and clarify the application before I write code. For example, just starting to write the specification resulted in conversations with my client that shifted the application quite a bit.

The another advantage of the specification is it provides me with accurate content I can pull into AI prompts. Moreover, I can pull in the prompts sequentially, building a larger prompt in the AI chat. In theory, once I begin to interact with my coding partner, the AI, the specification will ensure my prompts have detail and that the detail is correct.