Reviewing a draft

About seven in ten imports come back as a draft a person would keep. That figure comes from recorded imports run ten times each. Treat it as a planning number, not a promise about yours. The other three are wrong in ways you can recognise and fix in a few minutes. The same five patterns apply to drafts an agent writes.

The five ways a draft is usually wrong

1. One thing split by scale

A product that does exactly one thing, at more than one size or through more than one channel, often comes back as two directions. A link shortener that makes one code or a thousand codes reads as “single-code generation” and “batch generation”, when it is one intent with two capabilities.

Fix: merge them into one direction with both capabilities under it.

2. Planned work described as shipped

A feature written up before it was built reads exactly like one that exists.

Fix: delete it. What is not built is not the product yet. Raise it later as its own proposal, with the reason it was raised.

3. A question written as a statement

“The export schedule is not specified” really means “does the export run on a schedule, or on demand?”. It is an open question disguised as a finding.

Fix: read it as a question. Answer it by adding the material that settles it, or decide and write the answer in yourself.

4. One boundary repeated under several features

The same rule, such as how long data is kept, is restated under every capability it touches, so the team reads one decision as several. unbranch lifts most shared boundaries automatically to the level they share.

Fix: if you still see a repeat, keep the copy at the level it applies to and delete the others. A rule the whole product is held to belongs with the product.

5. An invented item

A term that appears nowhere in your material: plausible, related, and not yours.

Fix: delete it. Anything you cannot point to in the material you sent has no source, and a reviewer cannot tell.

The same five in one line each

What it looks like	The fix
One thing split by the scale it is delivered at: “single” and “batch” as two directions.	Merge them: one direction, both capabilities under it.
A planned feature described as though it shipped.	Delete it. It belongs in a later proposal.
A question written as a statement.	Read it as a question: add the material that settles it, or decide.
One boundary repeated under several features.	Keep the copy at the level it applies to; delete the others.
An invented item: a term that is not in your material.	Delete it.

Before you send it for review

• Every direction is something the product is for, not a way of delivering it.
• Two directions that are one intent at different scales are merged into one.
• Nothing in the draft is planned, wished-for or half-finished.
• Every term in the draft can be pointed to in the material you sent.
• Each question the draft came back with is answered, or deleted because it is settled.
• Each boundary appears once, at the level it applies to.
• The titles are your team’s words, not the model’s.
• You have read the draft against the material it was written from, side by side.

The draft is yours until you send it. Nobody else can see it, and nothing is emailed or recorded until review opens.