Pathmode vs. ChatPRD

ChatPRD and Pathmode both use AI to produce better specifications, but they start from different inputs and serve different team structures.

ChatPRD is a solo spec generator. You describe an idea in natural language, and ChatPRD's AI asks Socratic questions to refine it into a structured PRD. The interaction is a conversation between one person and an AI — much like a coaching session. The output is a well-formatted document with sections for overview, goals, user stories, and technical considerations. ChatPRD also offers MCP integration for delivering context to coding agents.

Pathmode is a team intent compiler. Instead of starting from one person's idea, it starts from collected user evidence — friction signals, interview quotes, support tickets, analytics. The AI synthesizes this evidence into an IntentSpec, a five-part structured spec (Objective, User Goal, Outcomes, Edge Cases, Verification) designed for both human alignment and machine execution.

The key architectural difference is input. ChatPRD's input is a prompt — one person's description of what they want to build. Pathmode's input is evidence — structured data about what users actually need. This means ChatPRD specs reflect the quality of the initial idea. Pathmode specs reflect the quality of the evidence collected.

For teams, this distinction matters. ChatPRD produces a document one person owns. Pathmode produces a spec the team builds together from shared evidence, with a Constitution that enforces team-wide constraints across all specs.

Scenario: Building a password reset flow.

In ChatPRD, a developer opens a chat and types: "I need to build a password reset flow for our SaaS app." ChatPRD asks questions: Who are the users? What's the current experience? What security requirements exist? After 5-10 back-and-forth messages, it generates a PRD with user stories, technical requirements, and success metrics.

In Pathmode, the team first captures evidence: a support ticket metric ("47 password reset emails per week"), a user quote ("I tried three times and gave up"), and an observation ("current flow requires email verification but link expires in 15 minutes — too short for users who check email on a different device"). This evidence feeds an IntentSpec with concrete outcomes ("reset completes in under 2 minutes," "link valid for 1 hour," "rate-limited to 3 requests/hour"). The spec exports via MCP to the coding agent.

ChatPRD produced a better PRD than the developer would have written alone. Pathmode produced a spec grounded in evidence that the whole team can verify.