Frame the Job and Success Criteria

Key jargon

Term	Plain-language meaning
Task specification	A concrete statement of the input, desired output, constraints, and audience.
Acceptance criterion	An observable condition that must be true for work to be accepted.
Rubric	A structured scoring guide for judging quality.
Constraint	A hard boundary such as format, scope, privacy, time, or cost.

Key concepts

Clear success criteria make both prompting and evaluation easier.
Separate hard constraints from preferences so failures are visible.

Concept map

flowchart LR
    A["Define user outcome"] --> B["Specify inputs and constraints"]
    B --> C["Set acceptance criteria"]
    C --> D["Evaluate the result"]

Good AI use begins before the prompt. Define:

Question	Example
What outcome is needed?	A one-page comparison for a purchasing decision
Who will use it?	A non-technical manager
What evidence is acceptable?	Current vendor specifications and independent standards
What may the system access?	Public sources; no customer records
What may it change?	Nothing; recommendation only
What counts as done?	Three options, explicit tradeoffs, dated citations
When must it stop?	Conflicting specifications or missing budget

Task classes

Transform: rewrite, translate, summarize supplied material.
Extract: return named fields from documents.
Generate: produce a draft or alternatives.
Research: gather, reconcile, and cite external evidence.
Decide: recommend while keeping the human accountable.
Act: use tools to change external state; requires the strongest controls.

Exercise

Rewrite “help me choose a laptop” as a job statement containing audience, budget, workload, evidence date, output format, and explicit unknowns.