Spec‑First Handoff: 7 Contractor‑Ready Artifacts From a 60‑Second Clickable Demo

Start with a single playable demo (Figma prototype, InVision, or a small Web UI) that demonstrates the core happy‑path flow for the feature. The goal of the session is not to design everything — it’s to extract machine‑actionable and human‑readable artifacts that let contractors execute without repeated clarifications.

Run a 30–60 minute focused session with product, design, and one engineering lead (can be remote). Record the session. During the demo, capture: user goals, primary inputs/outputs, edge cases observed, and what telemetry would matter for rollout. These notes become the seed for all seven artifacts.

Produce a minimal OpenAPI 3.x document that represents the UI’s backend surface: endpoints, request/response shapes (happy path), authentication, and error codes. Treat this spec as the contract developers will implement and QA will test against. Start small: focus on the endpoints exercised by the demo, with example payloads and status codes.

Why this matters: a spec‑first OpenAPI file enables mock servers, client/server stub generation, contract tests and parallel frontend/backend work. Tools like Postman, Prism, and OpenAPI Generator will consume a single OpenAPI file to create mocks and stubs quickly, cutting ambiguous back‑and‑forth with engineers.

Convert the demo’s happy path and top 3 edge cases into acceptance criteria using Given/When/Then scenarios. These scenarios should be executable or directly translatable to your CI-friendly framework (Cucumber, Playwright tests, Cypress specs mapped to API mocks). Acceptance tests act as an unambiguous definition of done for contractors and a living test-suite for QA.

Keep each scenario focused and atomic. For each scenario include preconditions (data seeding), the steps visible in the demo, and the expected observable outcome (UI state, API response). If you manage both UI and API teams, include whether the test is UI-driven or API-driven and a short runbook for setting up mocks/stubs from the OpenAPI file.

A 1‑page Product Requirements Doc keeps scope tight and decisions discoverable. Include: user problem, primary user journey (linked to the 60s demo), non‑goals, acceptance criteria (link the BDD scenarios), rollout plan, and the OpenAPI spec reference. One page forces clarity and gives contractors context without a long brief.

Use a consistent PRD header so engineers can quickly find impacted systems, performance constraints, and rollout metrics. Attach the demo recording, Figma link, and the OpenAPI file. If you expect privacy or legal constraints (data retention, PII), call them out explicitly in the PRD’s non‑goals section.

Translate the demo into a telemetry map: what events are emitted, their properties, user identifiers, and business contexts. Focus on the events needed to validate the feature’s success metrics and to debug rollout problems. A clear telemetry plan prevents guesswork and supports A/B experiments and observability from day one.

Provide an implementation note that references analytics SDKs (Amplitude, Mixpanel, server events to BigQuery), event names, and property definitions. Add minimal privacy notes (PII avoidance, hashing requirements) and a suggested retention/warehouse destination. This artifact is a contract between product and engineering for what gets instrumented.