What requirements should an AI coding agent get before it builds?

An AI coding agent needs more than a story: it needs the expected behaviour for each case, the business rules that apply, the decisions already made with their reasons, and the questions still open. Rivora Connect prepares these as part of each feature's solution, your team checks every part, and the agent gets the approved plan with the decisions and rules attached.

Why aren't user stories enough for an agent?

Requirements often say what should happen and leave the edge cases, business rules and expected behaviour unclear. A person fills those gaps by asking. An agent fills them by guessing, quickly and confidently.

On an established product the gaps are where the risk is: the client who works differently, the rule from a contract, the old flow that must keep working.

What should the requirements include?

A checklist that works for people and for agents:

1. Intent: what the feature is for and what is out of scope.
2. Impact on the current product: which screens, flows and clients it touches.
3. Expected behaviour for each case, including the unhappy paths.
4. Business rules that apply, with where each one applies.
5. Decisions already made, with the reason, so the agent doesn't reverse them.
6. Frontend, backend, data and system impact, in enough detail to build.
7. An implementation plan and stories, in the order to build them.
8. Open questions, listed, so the agent asks before it assumes.

Our free feature readiness check scores a feature against a list like this in a few minutes.

How does Rivora prepare requirements an agent can follow?

Each feature's solution has nine parts: Executive Summary, Feature Intent, Product Impact, System Impact, Frontend and UX, Backend and Platform, Data and Memory, Implementation Handoff and Delivery Backlog. Your team chooses which parts each feature needs.

• Rivora asks questions before and while it drafts, and the people who know answer.
• A person approves each part, sends it back with a comment, or edits it. Only approved parts feed the parts that follow.
• Approved work goes to coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor and Codex, with the decisions and rules attached. Implementation Handoff is the build plan; the other parts are the approved detail behind it.
• One epic per feature. Stories go to Jira only after a person approves them.

How do I write a PRD for Claude Code?

Write it the way you would for a careful new engineer: intent, scope, expected behaviour for each case, the rules that apply, and what is still undecided. Then give it the reasons behind each decision, because the agent can't ask the meeting it wasn't in.

Writing the document is rarely the slow part. Finding the answers is. Rivora gets those answers from the people who know while the feature is designed, and you can export approved parts as Markdown or as a PRD for any tool.

Questions

Does a small change need all nine parts?

No. Teams mark the parts a feature doesn't need, so a small change gets a short plan.

What happens to questions nobody has answered?

They stay visible as open questions on the feature, and the agent can list them and ask you about any that block the work.

Can we use our own PRD template?

Rivora uses its own nine-part structure. Approved parts export as Markdown or as a PRD.