Article notes
Before I Trust an AI Feature
A successful demo answers one question: can the capability work? My essay asks what else a team needs to know before putting that capability into a product people depend on.
Read full essay on MediumThe argument
Make readiness part of the product specification.
Expected behavior, failure modes, evaluation evidence, and human control belong in the PRD. They give a team something concrete to review when deciding whether an AI feature is ready to launch.
The point is to examine the situations a polished demonstration can leave out: ambiguous requests, weak evidence, incorrect outputs, and the moment a person needs to intervene.
The framework
Four questions for the readiness review.
Behavior
What should the feature do across normal, ambiguous and edge cases?
Failure
How can it fail, who is affected and how reversible is the outcome?
Evaluation
What evidence supports launch, and what will be monitored after it?
Control
Who can review, override, pause or roll back the feature?
Framework at a glance
Demo
Capability visible
Readiness
Decision evidence
Trust
Launch confidence
Readiness gate
Behavior
Expected paths
Failure
Known limits
Evaluation
Launch evidence
Control
Human authority
The launch decision
The specification should make disagreement possible.
“The feature looks good” leaves too much implicit. A review is more useful when people can point to the behavior expected, the failures they are prepared to accept, the evidence supporting that judgment, and the controls available after release.
That also connects evaluation to a product decision. A result should help the team decide whether to launch, narrow the scope, add a review step, or keep testing.