Decide if a feature request is really about something else entirely
The requested feature and the actual underlying need are often different things.
- Use it for
- Product people evaluating a specific feature request before committing to build it.
Feature requests are often solutions a user proposed, not the actual problem underneath — building exactly what was asked can miss a better, simpler fix for the real need, or worse, ship a workaround for a problem that has a completely different real cause. This prompt checks whether the literal request matches the actual underlying need before committing to build it as stated.
When not to use this
For a request that's already clearly and simply the right fix — a genuine bug or an obviously missing basic capability — this interrogation is unnecessary overhead. This is for requests specific or unusual enough to be worth questioning first.
Did this work?
You know whether the literal request or a different underlying need is what's actually worth building for, before committing engineering time to either.
Tested on claude-opus-5. Evidence status is draft; it moves to battle-tested only on recorded runs, never by hand.