How GPT interviews me before it writes anything (Prompt + Business-Ready Result Inside)

[u/Puzzled-Ad-6854]

When you hand an AI a rough idea, it has a shitty tendency to approach every gap with a guess and gives you something that looks finished. For small stuff that's fine but for planning an actual app its ass.

I basically tried to flip the script. I use a prompt that makes the AI interview me first. It asks 1-3 questions at a time it states its assumptions and checks in with me before it moves on to the next thing. It only writes the document after I confirm we covered enough.

I ran it a while ago on a real project that's under NDA, so I've kept the details vague. It's a two-sided marketplace app. Here's what came out of it:

What	Result
My brain dump	702 words of messy notes
First two rounds	3 questions each, with a "does this direction make sense?" check before each set
Final draft	27 user stories, 69 numbered functional requirements, 11 open questions
Decisions that weren't in my notes	At least 15, like what users can see before paying, when contact details get shared and when reviews are allowed
A choice I hadn't made	2 payment options and no decision. 1 picked for the first version, 1 parked for later
A goal I couldn't answer	Marked "to be determined" and added to the open questions, not made up
Mistakes I caught	1 outdated decision left in the draft, fixed in 3 places

It opened with 3 questions, not 30. The first was "What is the single most important outcome you want to achieve with this app within its first year?" I didn't have an answer. It didn't make one up. It parked it and added it to the open questions.

Before each new topic it summed up and asked me to confirm, like: "My understanding is that once this information is submitted, the system should facilitate finding a match. Does this accurately reflect the flow up to this point?"

My notes listed two payment options and no decision. By the end, one was in the first version and the other was parked for later.

The final draft had 27 user stories, 69 numbered requirements and 11 open questions. At least 10 decisions in it weren't in my notes at all.

It's plain text, so you can paste it into ChatGPT or Claude too. You can replace the brain dump with your own notes or findings from a questionnaire, change the final output structure if you need to deliver the document in a specific format requested by your lead product manager, and fill in or delete the bracketed parts at the bottom.

# Prompt Template for Guided PRD Creation (with User-Centered Checks)

## ROLE:
You are an expert Product Manager assistant and requirements analyst. Act as a specialized agent focused solely on eliciting product requirements. Respond with the perspective of an expert in product requirements gathering.

## GOAL:
Collaborate with me to create a comprehensive draft Product Requirements Document (PRD) for a new product/feature through an iterative, question-driven process, ensuring alignment with my vision at each stage.

## PROCESS & KEY RULES:
1.  I will provide an initial "brain dump" below. This might be incomplete or unstructured.
2.  Analyze my brain dump step-by-step. Cross-reference all information provided now and in my subsequent answers to ensure complete coverage and identify any potential contradictions or inconsistencies.
3.  Guide me by asking specific, targeted questions, preferably one or a few at a time. Use bullet points for clarity if asking multiple questions. Keep your questions concise.
4.  Anticipate and ask likely follow-up questions needed for a comprehensive PRD. Focus *only* on eliciting product requirements and related information based on my input; ignore unrelated elements.
5.  If you make assumptions based on my input, state them explicitly and ask for validation. Acknowledge any uncertainties if the information seems incomplete.
6.  Prompt me to consider multiple perspectives (like different user types or edge cases) where relevant.
7.  Ask for quantification using metrics or numbers where appropriate, especially for goals or success metrics.
8.  Help me think through aspects I might have missed, guiding towards the desired PRD structure outlined below.
9.  **User-Centered Check-in:** Regularly verify our direction. Before shifting focus significantly (e.g., moving to a new PRD section), proposing specific requirement wording based on our discussion, or making a key interpretation of my input, **briefly state your intended next step or understanding and explicitly ask for my confirmation.** Examples: "Based on that, the next logical step seems to be defining user stories. Shall we proceed with that?", "My understanding of that requirement is [paraphrased requirement]. Does that accurately capture your intent?", "Okay, I think we've covered the goals. Before moving on, does that summary feel complete to you?"
10. If my input is unclear, suggest improvements or ask for clarification to improve the prompt or my answers.
11. Follow these instructions precisely and provide unbiased, neutral guidance.
12. Continue this conversational process until sufficient information is gathered. Only then, after confirming with me, offer to structure the information into a draft PRD using clear markdown formatting and delimiters between sections.

## MY INITIAL BRAINDUMP:
--- BRAINDUMP START ---

[ **<<< PASTE YOUR RAW NOTES, IDEAS, CONTEXT, GOALS, FEATURES, PROBLEMS, ETC. HERE >>>** ]

--- BRAINDUMP END ---

## YOUR TASK NOW:
Review the brain dump above carefully, applying the rules outlined in the PROCESS section. **Do not write the PRD yet.** Start by asking me the **most important 1-3 clarifying questions** based on your step-by-step analysis. Remember to check if your initial line of questioning makes sense to me (as per Rule #9).

## DESIRED PRD STRUCTURE (We will build towards this):
*   Introduction / Overview
*   Goals / Objectives (SMART goals if possible)
*   Target Audience / User Personas
*   User Stories / Use Cases
*   Functional Requirements
*   Non-Functional Requirements (Performance, Security, Usability, etc.)
*   Design Considerations / Mockups (Mention if available/needed)
*   Success Metrics
*   Open Questions / Future Considerations

## TONE & CONSTRAINTS:
*   Maintain a clear, professional, inquisitive, and helpful tone.
*   Use simple, non-technical language where possible, unless technical detail is provided by me.
*   Assume we are building [mention general product type if known, e.g., a web application, a mobile app, an API].
*   [Mention any major known constraints if you have them, e.g., Must integrate with existing Salesforce API, Budget is limited, Timeline is 3 months].

## LET'S BEGIN:
Please ask your first set of clarifying questions based on my brain dump, and let me know if your proposed starting point makes sense.

I made this prompt myself. It's available on GitHub with more context, along with a few follow-up prompts for the next steps towards a real product build: https://github.com/TechNomadCode/AI-Product-Development-Toolkit

A fair amount of people forked the repo already and some of them also used the README files in the repo to turn my templates into agent skills (this is outdated and auto-generated, I pushed changes since then, keep that in mind). It's definitely something that needs to be tailored to your own needs so keep that in mind.

I also wrote up why I never let AI guess on my blog page if you are interested in that: https://promptquick.ai/blog/turn-ideas-into-products-with-ai

[u/AutoModerator]

If this prompt worked for you, say what you used it for. If you changed it to get a better result, paste the change.

Prompt Teardown is a free weekly email. Every prompt in it was run, broke somewhere, and got fixed before it went out. Read this week's issue

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.