Frame the Job and Success Criteria

Fact-check status

Reviewed claim by claim on 2026-09-02 against the primary or official sources identified inline as S1 and S2. Recommendations are design guidance unless a cited standard makes them normative.

Key jargon

Term	Plain-language meaning
Task specification	A concrete statement of the input, desired output, constraints, and audience. S1
Acceptance criterion	An observable condition that must be true for work to be accepted. S1
Rubric	A structured scoring guide for judging quality. S1
Constraint	A hard boundary such as format, scope, privacy, time, or cost. S1

Key concepts

Clear success criteria make both prompting and evaluation easier. S1
Separate hard constraints from preferences so failures are visible. S1

Concept map

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

Diagram semantics verified against S1 and S2 on 2026-09-02.

Good AI use begins before the prompt. Define: S1

Question	Example
What outcome is needed?	A one-page comparison for a purchasing decision S1
Who will use it?	A non-technical manager S1
What evidence is acceptable?	Current vendor specifications and independent standards S1
What may the system access?	Public sources; no customer records S1
What may it change?	Nothing; recommendation only S1
What counts as done?	Three options, explicit tradeoffs, dated citations S1
When must it stop?	Conflicting specifications or missing budget S1

Task classes

Transform: rewrite, translate, summarize supplied material. S1
Extract: return named fields from documents. S1
Generate: produce a draft or alternatives. S1
Research: gather, reconcile, and cite external evidence. S1
Decide: recommend while keeping the human accountable. S1
Act: use tools to change external state; requires the strongest controls. S1

Exercise

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