Pathmode replaces the hand-written PRD with an IntentSpec — intent authored from real customer evidence and handed to AI coding agents at build time. A PRD is written for humans to read once at kickoff and drifts the moment work starts. An IntentSpec is written for an agent to execute repeatedly and stays attached to its evidence, so the judgment travels into the build instead of going stale.
A builder writes a careful PRD: problem, the customer quotes behind it, the outcome, the edge cases. Sign-off happens, the doc gets a thumbs-up, work starts. Three weeks in, scope shifts, an edge case turns out to be wrong, and a new ticket reframes the problem. The PRD still says what it said on day one. Nobody reopens it. The agent building the feature never saw it — it saw a Linear ticket that compressed the whole document into one line.
The PRD did its job, then stopped
A PRD is a human artifact. It exists to win agreement at a moment in time — to get a room to nod and a stakeholder to sign. That job ends at kickoff. From there the document only ages: the evidence that justified each decision sits in the prose as past-tense narrative, not as something the build can read, and every change after sign-off widens the gap between what the doc says and what's actually being shipped.
That's not a flaw in your writing. It's what the format is for. A PRD is read once.
What changes when intent is written for execution
- The evidence stays attached. The tickets and quotes that motivated the work are linked to the spec, not paraphrased into a paragraph that nobody updates.
- The agent reads the outcome, not a one-line ask. It gets what to preserve and what must not regress — the parts of your judgment that decide the call when the instruction and the outcome conflict.
- It's the thing that gets re-read. When scope shifts, the spec is where the change lands, so the current decision is the one the build sees — not the version frozen at sign-off.
A PRD is read once; intent is handed to the build.
PRD by hand vs IntentSpec
| PRD written by hand | IntentSpec | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it's written for | Humans, to align and approve | An AI coding agent, to execute |
| When it's read | Once, at kickoff | Repeatedly, every time work resumes |
| Does it carry the evidence | As past-tense prose; drifts from source | Linked to the tickets, quotes, and metrics behind it |
| What happens as it ages | Goes stale; the gap to reality widens silently | Stays current; the spec is where changes land |
| Can an agent execute it | No — it must be re-compressed into a ticket first | Yes — the agent reads it directly at build time |
Where the PRD is still the right tool
If you need to win a room, record why a decision was made, or give a stakeholder something to react to before a line of code is written, write the PRD. It's the better artifact for persuasion and the better record for an audit later. The point isn't that PRDs are wrong — it's that they were never built to be executed, and an agent at build time needs something that is.
Frequently asked questions
- Isn't a PRD still useful?
- Yes — for what it was built for. A PRD is the right tool for an alignment narrative, stakeholder sign-off, and a decision record people read before work starts. It just isn't built to be executed by an agent or to stay current as the build moves. An IntentSpec covers the second job, not the first.
- How is an IntentSpec different from a well-written PRD?
- A good PRD captures a decision at a moment in time. An IntentSpec carries the evidence that drove the decision and is structured for an agent to act on — the outcome to preserve and what must not regress. When the work changes, the spec is the thing the agent re-reads, so it stays load-bearing instead of becoming a stale artifact.
- Do I have to throw away my existing PRDs?
- No. Keep them for alignment and the record. Pathmode assembles the evidence you already have — tickets, interviews, observed friction, metrics — into an IntentSpec the agent reads at build time. The PRD argues the decision to people; the IntentSpec hands that decision to the build.