The AI Shift

How We Write Requirements

AI only sees what you give it. Everything else it figures out on its own,  and its best guess is rarely built around your business.

For years, a simple format drove how software got built:

"As a library member, I want to check out a book so I can read it at home."

User stories like this were never full blueprints. They were conversation starters. The gaps got filled by experienced people who already knew your business , what was allowed, what could never go wrong, what common sense looked like in your context.

That worked fine when humans were building. It becomes unreliable when the builder is an AI.

AI doesn't share your context. It fills gaps with guesses.

Those guesses might be harmless in a simple system. In anything more complex, every ambiguity is a small risk, and the wrong assumptions don't always surface until something breaks.

the fix isn't to abandon user stories. It's to pair them with something AI actually needs: a short, plain-English description of your business rules. Not a technical document,  think of it as a business constitution. It answers the questions stories leave open:

• What does your business track, and how do those things connect?

• Who can do what, and under what conditions?

• What rules can never be broken, no matter what?

This isn't extra work. It's the same thinking that was always happening,  in standups, Slack threads, a senior engineer's head. AI just makes it necessary to write it down first.

The teams getting the most from AI-assisted development aren't writing better prompts. They're doing better thinking upfront.

That's always been good practice. AI just makes the cost of skipping it more visible.