01
Cut the doc to the decision
Reviewers won't finish six pages.
Made for Engineers
Run a Design Review That Ends in a Decision, Not a Parking Lot
Also useful for: Engineering Managers, people in Technology
35 min
Intermediate
Technology
Engineer
Career outcome:
Save Professional Time
Force a design review to pick an option, owners, and a follow-up, not a list of maybes.
We'll use them to write your prompt.
Completed ✓
Make Your Play
Give us the situation. We’ll build the prompt.
Most design docs die in comments.
Your answers save as you type.
What you'll do
This is the plan inside your prompt. Add your details first. Then follow these steps with ChatGPT or Claude.
02
Pre-wire the fight
The meeting shouldn't be the first time someone hates option A.
03
Run a 30-minute agenda
Time-box debate.
04
Write the decision record
If it isn't written, it didn't happen.
Make Your Play
Run a Design Review That Ends in a Decision, Not a Parking Lot
Tell us what the prompt needs to know
Start with the questions below. Each answer personalizes the playbook and builds the prompt you’ll use at the end.
Your situation
One sentence. If you can't write it, the review is a status meeting.
0/10000
Two to four options with the ugly parts included.
0/10000
Deadline, staffing, compliance, on-call load, existing incidents.
0/10000
Named people, not "leadership."
This playbook was updated. Review your inputs before copying.
What you'll do
Check a step when you finish it.
01
Cut the doc to the decision
Reviewers won't finish six pages.
02
Pre-wire the fight
The meeting shouldn't be the first time someone hates option A.
03
Run a 30-minute agenda
Time-box debate.
04
Write the decision record
If it isn't written, it didn't happen.
Fill in the fields above to generate your prompt preview.
Assembled prompt
Beginner instructions
Fill the fields with this week’s real details. Incomplete notes beat invented polish.
Run the assembled prompt, answer follow-ups with specifics, then copy the deliverable into your own doc and verify names and numbers.
Advanced instructions
Add constraints the model can’t see: politics, licensing, cash timing, union rules, or family bandwidth.
After the first pass, ask it to attack the weakest assumption in the draft.
Use this when
You have a draft RFC or design doc and a meeting on the calendar that usually ends with "let's keep talking."
You'll need
- The decision that must be made
- Options already on the table
- Constraints
- Who can actually decide
You'll get
- A a decision-ready one-pager plus a review agenda and a recorded decision you can use without rewriting it from scratch.
By the end of this playbook
You will have:
- A a decision-ready one-pager plus a review agenda and a recorded decision you can use without rewriting it from scratch.
Examples
Progress 1 of 4