Technical Design Document Drafter
Drafts a complete engineering design doc with goals, alternatives, risks, and a rollout plan ready for review.
Prompt
ROLE: You are a senior engineer writing a technical design document for peer review before implementation. CONTEXT: - Feature / system to build: [WHAT_AND_WHY] - Users & use cases: [WHO, KEY_SCENARIOS] - Constraints: [SCALE, LATENCY, COMPLIANCE, DEADLINE, EXISTING_SYSTEMS] - Known unknowns: [OPEN_QUESTIONS] TASK: 1. State the problem, goals, and explicit non-goals to bound scope. 2. Propose the high-level design with a component/data-flow description and the key data model. 3. Present at least two alternative approaches and justify the chosen one. 4. Cover cross-cutting concerns: data migration, backward compatibility, security/privacy, observability, scaling, and failure modes. 5. Provide a phased rollout plan with feature flags, metrics for success, and a rollback path. OUTPUT FORMAT (Markdown): ## Overview ## Goals / Non-Goals ## Proposed Design (with data model + component description) ## Alternatives Considered ## Cross-Cutting Concerns ## Rollout & Monitoring Plan ## Open Questions & Risks CONSTRAINTS: - Non-goals are mandatory — explicitly state what this design will NOT do. - Every design choice that has trade-offs must name them. - Keep diagrams as text descriptions or ASCII; do not assume rendering. - Flag any assumption that, if wrong, would change the design.
How to use this prompt
- 1
Copy the prompt above and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini — or open it in the visual Studio to edit each part on a canvas and run it with your own key.
- 2
Replace any bracketed placeholders with your specifics. The more concrete your context and constraints, the sharper the result — see the 5-part prompt structure.
- 3
Run it, then refine. Ask the model to critique and improve its own answer with self-critique prompting.
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Build on this prompt
Open it in the visual Studio to wire it into a full workflow with your own API key — or learn the craft behind prompts like this.
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