Monthly newsletter · Written only
Specs your devs don't bounce back.
For Product Owners, PMs and Business Analysts who use AI to write specifications — and need them to survive contact with an engineering team. Workflows tested in production, prompts with their failure modes documented, lessons from real spec reviews.
Written by a lead PO/BA who implemented an AI-assisted specification→development pipeline (GitHub Copilot) now running in production at a major French insurer.
Free · 10 prompts + a PRD template on signup · Unsubscribe anytime
01. What you get
One email a month. Never skipped, never padded.
- Practical AI-assisted spec workflows. The prompt-and-review loops that turn a rough backlog item into a spec a developer can implement — as used in production, not in a demo.
- Prompt of the month. One prompt, documented like an engineering artifact: when to use it, the context it needs, a worked example, and where it fails.
- Teardown lessons. What actually gets specs bounced back by dev teams — patterns from real reviews, anonymized, with the fix.
02. The standard
What “documented like an engineering artifact” means.
Here is the opening of prompt 01 from the free slice, exactly as subscribers get it. No prompt ships without all four fields.
- When to use
- You have a fuzzy ask (“we need a customer portal v2”) and must open a PRD that won’t get shredded in review.
- Paste in
- The raw ask verbatim, who asked, the product’s one-line description, 3 bullet facts you know about the context.
- The prompt
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You are a senior product owner on a regulated B2B platform. From the raw request below, draft the PROBLEM section of a PRD — not the solution. Produce: (1) the problem in ≤3 sentences, stated as a …
Full prompt in the free slice — with its worked example
- Failure modes
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- Invents plausible-sounding metrics if you don’t force UNKNOWN.
- Drifts into solutioning when the raw request already contains a feature idea — delete any solution sentences it sneaks in.
The free slice — 10 prompts like this one, plus a one-page PRD template — is delivered when you subscribe.
03. Coming soon
Two products, in the works.
A. Digital product
The PO Prompt Vault
A prompt library and spec-template system for product work. Every prompt is documented like an engineering artifact — when to use it, what to paste in, a worked example, and where it fails.
Coming soon →
B. Fixed-price service
The 48-hour Spec Teardown
A written review of your spec in 48 business hours: annotated document, prioritized fix list, one section rewritten to show the standard. No call required — none offered.
Coming soon →
04. Latest writing
From the blog.
05. FAQ
Fair questions.
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Q1.
Is it free?
The newsletter and the free slice — 10 documented prompts plus a one-page PRD template — are free. Two paid products are in the works: the full PO Prompt Vault and the 48-hour Spec Teardown. Both are self-serve, optional, and announced to subscribers first.
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Q2.
Who is it for?
Product Owners, Product Managers and Business Analysts who write specs a development team implements — user stories, acceptance criteria, PRDs, API change notes — and who use, or want to use, AI in that loop. If you never write specs, it will bore you.
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Q3.
Why written only?
Because a spec is a written artifact. A method that only works when someone explains it on a call won't survive contact with your backlog. Written also means async, searchable, and skimmable in the two minutes you actually have. There is no YouTube channel, and there is no “quick call” to book.
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Q4.
How is this different from a prompt listicle?
Every prompt here ships with when to use it, the context it needs, a worked example, and its known failure modes — the way engineering teams document runbooks. A prompt with no documented failure mode hasn't been used for real. These have.
06. About
Who writes this.
Written by a lead PO/BA who implemented an AI-assisted specification→development pipeline (GitHub Copilot) now running in production at a major French insurer.
Ship the Spec is a written-first publication. No YouTube channel, no webinars, no "book a quick call". Everything here is prompts, templates and teardown lessons drawn from real delivery — sanitized, never a client's artifact. If it can't be explained in writing, it isn't understood well enough to ship.
— Pierre K.
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