Working Backwards for AI Coding: Write the Blog Post First
Working Backwards for AI Coding: Write the Blog Post First
Source: https://x.com/i/status/2078592010852982977
📌 Dex Horthy recommends Amazon-style working backwards for AI coding: draft the customer-facing blog post before writing code. The plain-language narrative surfaces edge cases, clarifies priorities, and doubles as a plan agents can follow and later reuse as launch content.
📝 Start from the customer story
Before implementation, write the external blog post about the feature—what ships, who benefits, what fails gracefully, and what is deliberately out of scope.
🤖 Why it helps agents
Models are strong at implementing a well-specified outcome and weak at inventing product judgment. A readable customer narrative gives clearer intent and fewer ambiguous decisions to invent in code.
📦 Lightweight PR/FAQ
This is a lighter take on Amazon’s Working Backwards / PRFAQ process. Thread replies also treat the post as an acceptance test and pair it with jobs-to-be-done framing.
♻️ One artifact, many uses
The same document works as a planning artifact, prioritization filter, agent-readable spec, and ready-made launch post—no new process if you already use PRFAQ.
Key facts
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Author | Dex Horthy (@dexhorthy), HumanLayer |
| Posted | 18 July 2026 (~45K+ views, hundreds of likes shortly after) |
| Core technique | Amazon-style working backwards — write the customer-facing blog post before building |
| Stated benefits | Surfaces edge cases, focuses prioritization, readable plans, reusable launch content |
| Related methods | PR/FAQ (press release + FAQ); JTBD mentioned in thread replies |
| Primary audience | AI coding / agent workflows and traditional product planning |
Details
When doing high-level planning for agent-assisted development, force the product into plain, external language first. Drafting the customer-facing blog post clarifies what actually ships, who it helps, graceful failure modes, and deliberate non-goals—details that edge cases and priorities often hide when you start from implementation.
This is a lightweight form of Amazon’s Working Backwards process, often formalized as a PR/FAQ. Replies on the thread framed the blog post as an acceptance test and noted that fuller PRFAQs and jobs-to-be-done framing give coding agents clearer intent so they invent fewer product decisions in code.
The practice matters because models excel at implementing a well-specified outcome and struggle with product judgment. A short customer narrative therefore serves as planning doc, prioritization filter, agent brief, and eventual launch post. Teams already using PRFAQ for discovery can plug the same artifact into AI coding workflows without inventing a new process.