When I stepped into product management, PRD was the alpha and omega of product development. I know a lot of people didn’t agree, and they still don’t, but this was how I was ‘trained.’ I believed only a crystal clear PRD could align the team on 'what' & 'why.' It was a work of art to master. I spent a lot of time, maybe too much time, honing my PRDs in the pre-AI era.
Nowadays, everyone is talking about ‘AI Product Manager.’ A vibe-coded working prototype is the new PRD. You’re supposed to convince your team with your app, not with your writing. I started to do this a lot too. I spend way less time writing a perfect PRD. But I keep coming back to producing good product write-ups, realizing that I can only make my thinking and the problem super crisp through writing. Vibe-coding sometimes hinders clear thinking since it makes me think within the visual UX.
This is why this post resonates with me a lot. If the future of product development is living with AI agents, just like it already did for engineering, I think product teams should keep embracing a strong writing culture for their product initiatives. The difference is that now we can write much faster with the help of AI and we don’t have to waste our time on the 'information logistics' like organizing requirements in pretty templates or turning a PRD into tickets. Just focus on the product impact and let Claude Code/Linear MCP (or any AI tools of your choice) handle the rest 😀