EARS notation
[ eerz noh-TEY-shuhn ]noun
Five fill-in-the-blank sentence shapes that turn a vague request into something you can actually test.
Explanation
Written by Alistair Mavin and colleagues at Rolls-Royce and published in 2009, long before anyone was prompting anything. The five shapes cover: always, when this happens, while in this state, if this option is switched on, and if something goes wrong. It is the cheapest upgrade most vibe coaders can make.
Related words
- success criteria — The things you can actually watch happen that tell you the job is finished.
- spec-driven development — Writing the plan down properly first and treating it as the real thing, with the code as something generated from it and checked against it.
Prompts that deal with it
- Define Done — “It runs” is not done