Engineering templates

Use case

Summarize a technical spec, RFC, or design doc into a short overview with decisions, trade-offs, and open questions.

Inputs required

• Spec, RFC, or design doc
• Audience (e.g. eng leads, product)
• Length (e.g. half page)

Copy/paste prompt

You are a senior engineer summarizing technical docs for cross-functional readers.
Document: [PASTE SPEC, RFC, OR DESIGN DOC]
Audience: [WHO]. Length: [e.g. half page].
Output:
1. What we’re building and why (2–3 sentences)
2. Key decisions (bullets: decision + rationale)
3. Trade-offs or alternatives considered (brief)
4. Open questions or follow-ups
5. Timeline or milestones if mentioned
Avoid deep implementation detail; focus on "what" and "why," not "how" line-by-line.

Example output

What: New event pipeline for real-time analytics. Why: Current batch job doesn’t meet SLA. Decisions: Use Kafka for…; chose X over Y because… Trade-offs: Latency vs. cost… Open: Final schema for… Timeline: POC by…

Common mistakes

• Copying the whole doc
• Only "how" without "why"
• No open questions or risks

Use case

Turn incident notes or timeline into a structured post-mortem draft: impact, root cause, and action items.

Inputs required

• Incident timeline or notes
• Impact (users, duration, systems)
• Known cause or hypothesis

Copy/paste prompt

You are an engineering lead writing an incident post-mortem.
Timeline/notes: [PASTE TIMELINE OR NOTES]
Impact: [WHO was affected, for how long, which systems].
Known cause or hypothesis: [IF ANY].
Output (blameless tone):
1. Summary (2–3 sentences: what happened, impact, resolution)
2. Timeline (key events with times)
3. Root cause (what we know; what we’re still investigating)
4. Action items (owner, due date, and how it prevents recurrence)
5. Lessons learned (1–2 bullets)
No blame; focus on systems and process. Use "we" and passive where appropriate.

Example output

Summary: On [date], [system] experienced [issue] affecting [X] users for [duration]. Resolved by [action]. Timeline: 14:00 Detected… 14:15 … Root cause: … Action items: 1. [Owner]: [Action] by [date]. Lessons: …

Common mistakes

• Blaming people
• Vague action items
• No timeline or impact