Ship the SpecA written-first newsletter for Product Owners, PMs and Business Analysts on AI-assisted specification work — prompts, templates and teardown lessons from production, not demos.https://shipthespec.com/"It's backward compatible": an AI prompt that reads your API diff like a hostile consumerhttps://shipthespec.com/blog/ai-prompt-breaking-changes/https://shipthespec.com/blog/ai-prompt-breaking-changes/Most breaking changes ship inside diffs someone called safe. Here is a prompt that reads a contract diff from the strict consumer's seat — verdict table, the changes that look safe but aren't, and the one question no diff can answer. With a worked example.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTWhy your specs get bounced back (and what AI changes about it)https://shipthespec.com/blog/why-specs-get-bounced/https://shipthespec.com/blog/why-specs-get-bounced/Dev teams bounce specs for the same five gaps, every time: unsourced rules, untestable criteria, missing refusals, two-way sentences, undefined contract detail. AI fixes two of them and quietly makes three worse. Here is the review loop that catches all five.Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTAI prompts for user stories: how to get vertical slices, not backend ticketshttps://shipthespec.com/blog/ai-prompts-user-stories/https://shipthespec.com/blog/ai-prompts-user-stories/Ask AI to split an epic and it hands you a 'backend story' and a 'frontend story' — the exact split that gets bounced. Here is how to prompt for vertical slices, run an INVEST self-audit, and catch the detail it invents.Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe AI prompt for acceptance criteria that gives you testable Thenshttps://shipthespec.com/blog/ai-prompt-acceptance-criteria/https://shipthespec.com/blog/ai-prompt-acceptance-criteria/Ask ChatGPT or Copilot for acceptance criteria and you get 'the system handles it correctly' — untestable slop. Here is the one rule that fixes the prompt, with a before/after on a real story.Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT