[HN Gopher] Tickets Are Prompts
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       Tickets Are Prompts
        
       Author : bushido
       Score  : 10 points
       Date   : 2026-03-30 21:32 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (dheer.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (dheer.co)
        
       | Pakvothe wrote:
       | This resonates. We've been moving toward this with AI coding
       | assistants, the ticket description IS the prompt. The better you
       | write the ticket, the better the output. The missing piece is
       | giving the AI agent enough context about your codebase
       | conventions. Things like MCP servers that expose project-specific
       | tools and rules help bridge that gap.
        
       | chrysoprace wrote:
       | It is very rare that I've come across a well-defined ticket. The
       | most well-defined tickets were the ones I wrote myself, and even
       | those had gaps because I wasn't typically the product owner.
       | 
       | It's the same story that it's always been, agents or not, that
       | engineers need to be analysts and translate poorly defined
       | criteria into something that's fit for purpose.
        
         | bushido wrote:
         | I agree. I think the poorly defined criteria that we have all
         | gotten accustomed to is thanks to the many layers of the game
         | of whispers that we've added in in organizations between the
         | needs of the customer and the engineers.
         | 
         | Something I've been doing in my own organization, but also
         | trying to help other organizations with, is getting engineers
         | closer to the customers now that building and the time it takes
         | to build is no longer the resource, which is scarce.
        
       | pjm331 wrote:
       | the actual argument being made here:
       | 
       | "Assign agents the biggest piece justifiable. I can summarize a
       | product outcome or a feature in two lines. That's what goes on
       | the ticket. Let the agents figure out subtasks when the work is
       | ready for review, not before. Once you break an initiative into
       | technical issues upfront, the outcome gets lost and the focus
       | shifts to minutiae."
       | 
       | This is not about the ticket being well defined, this is about
       | the agent having the larger context of what you are trying to do
        
       | xg15 wrote:
       | I'd say the headline is misleading. The message is in effect that
       | (traditional, human-written) tickets are _not_ prompts and things
       | will go wrong if we treat them as such.
       | 
       | But because we will do so anyway, people should adapt and start
       | to write their tickets _like_ prompts.
        
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       (page generated 2026-03-30 23:00 UTC)