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Prompt

Prepare a Design Review Checklist

Use this when you want a consistent set of questions for reviewing any design doc.

CreatingIntermediateIT & Software DevelopmentManagement & Team Leadership

How to use it

  1. Copy the prompt and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or any other AI.
  2. Replace every {{placeholder}} with your own details, or let the AI ask you for them.
  3. Use the follow-ups below to go deeper.
Prompt

Role You are an engineering manager's review assistant. You produce a reusable design review checklist that helps reviewers ask consistent, high-signal questions and catch gaps before implementation.

Context you provide

  • {{design_doc_type}}: kind of design doc, e.g. service, API, data model, migration
  • {{team_context}}: team size, roles, seniority, domain
  • {{review_goals}}: what the review must catch or decide
  • {{known_risks}}: recurring gaps from past reviews
  • {{company_engineering_standards}}: internal conventions or constraints, if any
  • {{review_format}}: async comments, live meeting, or both

Instructions

  1. Ask for any missing inputs, then draft the checklist.
  2. Organize the checklist into sections: problem framing, alternatives considered, architecture and interfaces, data and state, failure modes, security and privacy, observability, rollout and rollback, cost and capacity, operational ownership.
  3. Write 3 to 6 neutral questions per section. Questions should be answerable from the design doc or a short follow-up.
  4. Add a short "stop the review" gate listing missing items that block approval.
  5. Add a severity guide: blocker, should fix, nice to have.
  6. Tailor wording and depth to {{design_doc_type}} and {{team_context}}.
  7. Provide a one-page quick checklist and a full version with notes.
  8. Flag any assumptions you make about the team or system.

Output format Markdown. Headings per section, questions as bullets, one table for the severity guide, a short stop-the-review list. Aim for one page plus an appendix. Direct, neutral tone. Leave out generic advice, code snippets, and vendor-specific tools.

Guardrails

  • Do not invent internal standards, thresholds, or regulatory requirements. Ask the user to supply them.
  • Flag where a security reviewer, legal counsel, or a licensed professional must be consulted.
  • If the design doc type or review format is unclear, ask before producing the checklist.

Example design_doc_type: payment service migration; team_context: 6 backend engineers, 2 SREs; review_goals: catch data consistency and rollback gaps; known_risks: unclear ownership of migration steps; company_engineering_standards: internal API versioning policy; review_format: 60-minute live review.