Context, Constraints, and Examples
Context explains the situation, constraints define permitted boundaries, and examples demonstrate the intended shape or standard of an output. Provide only relevant context, make hard boundaries explicit, and use examples to clarify rather than secretly replace requirements.
What You Will Be Able to Decide
- Explain context, constraints, and examples in product and business terms.
- Apply this decision: Provide only relevant context, make hard boundaries explicit, and use examples to clarify rather than secretly replace requirements.
- Recognise this material risk: the model fills missing decisions with plausible assumptions that conflict with the product.
- Ask a consultant for evidence rather than reassurance.
A founder is deciding what to delegate to AI and what evidence to require before accepting the result.
Context explains the situation, constraints define permitted boundaries, and examples demonstrate the intended shape or standard of an output.
A consultant can recommend and implement the technical approach. The founder still needs to decide which outcome matters, which risk is acceptable, and what evidence is sufficient.
The Practical Question
A founder is deciding what to delegate to AI and what evidence to require before accepting the result.
The immediate question is context, constraints, and examples. The technical label matters only because it changes a product decision, a responsibility, or the evidence required before launch.
Technical term
Context, Constraints, and Examples
Context explains the situation, constraints define permitted boundaries, and examples demonstrate the intended shape or standard of an output.
Treat it like a clause in a commercial agreement: its value comes from making expectations and consequences clear, not from sounding formal.
What a Sound Approach Establishes
Start with the product consequence, then choose the simplest technical treatment that protects it. A longer tool list is not a stronger plan.
For this decision, the useful standard is that the output satisfies explicit constraints and survives review outside the conversation that produced it.
- Make the decision explicit: Provide only relevant context, make hard boundaries explicit, and use examples to clarify rather than secretly replace requirements.
- Ask what evidence would show that the chosen approach works.
- Name the person or provider responsible when the approach fails.
- Record the result in the AI work brief, review record, and acceptance criteria.
A Decision Framework
Provide only relevant context, make hard boundaries explicit, and use examples to clarify rather than secretly replace requirements.
The principal risk is that the model fills missing decisions with plausible assumptions that conflict with the product. This does not require the most expensive possible solution. It requires the consequence to be understood and the control to match it.
- Describe the user or business outcome that must be protected.
- Identify the most credible failure and its consequence.
- Compare the simplest adequate approach with one realistic alternative.
- Set a review point for when the decision may need to change.
What Confidence Should Be Based On
Warning Signs
- Nobody can explain how context, constraints, and examples changes a user or business outcome.
- The proposal does not address this risk: the model fills missing decisions with plausible assumptions that conflict with the product.
- The only evidence is a successful demonstration of the easiest path.
- The decision has no named owner, boundary, or review point.
- A provider-specific feature is being mistaken for a permanent product requirement.
Questions to Ask a Consultant
- What decision are we making about context, constraints, and examples?
- Which user or business outcome does the recommendation protect?
- How have we reduced or accepted this risk: the model fills missing decisions with plausible assumptions that conflict with the product.
- What evidence can I review without relying on the original implementer?
- What is deliberately deferred, and when will it be reconsidered?
- Who owns the accounts, data, documentation, and recovery process?
Key takeaway
Key Takeaway
Context explains the situation, constraints define permitted boundaries, and examples demonstrate the intended shape or standard of an output. The founder's job is to make the consequence explicit; the consultant's job is to recommend and demonstrate a proportionate implementation.