Write a technical design doc (RFC) reviewers can approve
Turns a rough technical plan into a structured RFC with alternatives, risks, and open questions reviewers can sign off on.
The prompt
Help me write a technical design doc (RFC) for a change I want to make.
Problem and why now: [WHAT IS BROKEN OR MISSING, WHO IS AFFECTED, WHAT HAPPENS IF WE WAIT]
My proposed approach: [ROUGH NOTES, DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION, OR CODE SKETCH]
Current system: [RELEVANT SERVICES, DATA STORES, AND CONSTRAINTS]
Alternatives I considered: [OPTIONS - or "none yet"]
Reviewers: [e.g. "staff engineers, security, the payments team"]
Non-negotiables: [LATENCY, COST, COMPLIANCE, DEADLINE]
Structure the doc as:
1. Summary (5 sentences max: problem, proposal, impact, cost, decision needed).
2. Goals and explicit non-goals.
3. Proposed design: components, data flow, API or schema changes, and failure behavior.
4. Alternatives considered, each with why it lost. If I gave none, propose 2 credible ones, including "do nothing."
5. Risks and mitigations: data loss, backward compatibility, security, performance, operational load.
6. Rollout and rollback plan, including migrations and feature flags.
7. Testing and observability: how we'll know it works in production.
8. Open questions, each with an owner placeholder.
Rules:
- Do not invent numbers (traffic, latency, cost). Use [ADD METRIC] where data is needed.
- Flag any part of my approach that looks under-specified or risky, in a separate "Reviewer concerns to pre-empt" list.
- Keep it scannable: headings, short paragraphs, tables for comparisons. Aim for 2-4 pages.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Software Development prompts
What to fill in
- ROUGH NOTES, DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION, OR CODE SKETCH
- RELEVANT SERVICES, DATA STORES, AND CONSTRAINTS
- OPTIONS - or "none yet"
- e.g. "staff engineers, security, the payments team"
- LATENCY, COST, COMPLIANCE, DEADLINE
- ADD METRIC
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the RTF structure (Role, Task, Format). RTF tells the model who to be, what to do and what shape the answer should take. It is the quickest structure that still gives noticeably better results than a bare request.
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