Reviewing a Prompt Before Coding
Prompt review checks whether the requested change, scope, source context, constraints, evidence, and stopping conditions are complete before execution. Ask whether another competent agent could identify the same target files and completion standard from the prompt alone.
What You Will Be Able to Decide
- Explain reviewing a prompt before coding in product and business terms.
- Apply this decision: Ask whether another competent agent could identify the same target files and completion standard from the prompt alone.
- Recognise this material risk: an ambiguous instruction causes broad, internally consistent changes to the wrong product behaviour.
- 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.
Prompt review checks whether the requested change, scope, source context, constraints, evidence, and stopping conditions are complete before execution.
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 Founder Situation
A founder is deciding what to delegate to AI and what evidence to require before accepting the result.
The immediate question is reviewing a prompt before coding. The technical label matters only because it changes a product decision, a responsibility, or the evidence required before launch.
Technical term
Reviewing a Prompt Before Coding
Prompt review checks whether the requested change, scope, source context, constraints, evidence, and stopping conditions are complete before execution.
Treat it like a clause in a commercial agreement: its value comes from making expectations and consequences clear, not from sounding formal.
What Matters in Practice
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: Ask whether another competent agent could identify the same target files and completion standard from the prompt alone.
- 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 Proportionate Decision
Ask whether another competent agent could identify the same target files and completion standard from the prompt alone.
The principal risk is that an ambiguous instruction causes broad, internally consistent changes to the wrong product behaviour. 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.
Strong Evidence and Weak Reassurance
Warning Signs
- Nobody can explain how reviewing a prompt before coding changes a user or business outcome.
- The proposal does not address this risk: an ambiguous instruction causes broad, internally consistent changes to the wrong product behaviour.
- 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 reviewing a prompt before coding?
- Which user or business outcome does the recommendation protect?
- How have we reduced or accepted this risk: an ambiguous instruction causes broad, internally consistent changes to the wrong product behaviour.
- 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
Prompt review checks whether the requested change, scope, source context, constraints, evidence, and stopping conditions are complete before execution. The founder's job is to make the consequence explicit; the consultant's job is to recommend and demonstrate a proportionate implementation.