Ace Build Checklists
A four-stage pipeline (PB → DD → PRD → Build) that keeps Claude Code from skipping steps.
Build Checklists is a four-stage pipeline for building features without wasting effort on bad ideas, vague designs, or rushed execution:
PB → DD → PRD → Build| Stage | What it answers | Output |
|---|---|---|
| PB (Product Brief) | Should we do this? | One page: what / problem / solution / why this solution |
| DD (Design Doc) | What does it look like? | Before/after state, HTML visual charts |
| PRD (Requirements) | How do we get it built well? | A runnable build checklist |
| Build | Build it. | Working feature, checklist marked off |
Why this pipeline
Most building goes wrong in one of three places, and each stage exists to catch one of them:
- The wrong thing gets built: fix with the PB. One page, no more; if it doesn’t fit on a page, the idea isn’t clear yet.
- The right thing is poorly designed: fix with the DD. Generate before and after diagrams as dependency-free HTML files, so the new behavior is obvious before anyone writes code.
- The right thing, well designed, is sloppily executed: fix with the PRD. The PRD is a checklist, not a spec. Prose PRDs read like reading material, and on a build day you skim them and skip steps. Checklists are runnable; when you tick boxes, you don’t skip.
Scale the pipeline to the change: major work runs all four stages, medium work can skip the DD, small-but-significant work can go PB → Build, and small fixes just get built. The one stage never to skip is the PRD checklist - it’s what keeps execution honest.
How to use it
Copy the _templates/ folder (and optionally the CLAUDE.md snippet) into your workspace. For each feature, create a numbered folder - 001-feature-name/ - and drop in PB.md, then DD.md if needed, then PRD.md. Work the checklist top to bottom; when the last box is checked, the feature ships. MIT licensed.