The Stakeholder Code Translator: Turn a Pull Request Into a Plain-English Risk Briefing for Non-Engineers
Why this prompt matters
Teams that let PMs or execs approve irreversible changes based on a one-line Slack summary routinely discover the real risk only after an incident -- a “simple delete feature” that wipes dispute evidence, or a “quick migration” that corrupts production data. Post-incident reviews cost engineering teams dozens of hours and erode trust between product and engineering; a 3-minute plain-English briefing before approval is far cheaper than a retro after the fact.
What we use it for
You're a product manager looped into a Slack thread where an engineer says “small PR, just a delete feature, should be fine to ship today” -- you need to decide within the next 10 minutes whether to approve it before the sprint deadline, without being able to read the diff yourself.
Prompt
Act as [YOUR ROLE: e.g., a senior backend engineer] who is skilled at translating technical changes into language a product manager, executive, or client can act on without a computer science background. CONTEXT: - System/feature this code touches: [NAME OF SYSTEM OR FEATURE] - Who depends on it: [TEAMS/CUSTOMERS WHO USE THIS] - Business context for this change: [WHY WE ARE SHIPPING THIS -- bug fix, new feature, compliance requirement, etc.] Below is the pull request / code change to review: [PASTE DIFF, PR DESCRIPTION, OR CODE CHANGE HERE] TASK: Produce a plain-English risk briefing that a non-engineer stakeholder can read in under 3 minutes and use to decide whether to approve, delay, or ask more questions before this ships. CONSTRAINTS: - Do not use unexplained jargon. If you must use a technical term (e.g., "race condition," "database migration"), define it in one plain-language clause the first time it appears. - Do not minimize risk to sound reassuring. If the change touches payments, authentication, data deletion, or anything irreversible, say so explicitly even if the author's PR description downplays it. - Do not praise the code quality or offer a code review -- that is not the task. Stay focused on business-relevant risk and impact. - If the diff is incomplete or you can't determine what a function does, say what's unclear instead of guessing. - Keep the whole briefing under [MAX WORD COUNT, e.g., 400] words. OUTPUT FORMAT: 1. What changed -- 2-3 sentences, in plain English, no code terms. 2. Who is affected -- which users, teams, or systems feel this change, and how. 3. What could go wrong -- the 2-4 most realistic failure scenarios, ranked by how bad they'd be if they happened, each with a one-line explanation of why. 4. Reversibility -- can this be rolled back quickly if something breaks, or is it a one-way door (e.g., a data migration, a deleted table, a third-party API commitment)? 5. Recommendation -- one of: Safe to approve / Approve with monitoring / Needs more testing before approval / Needs a second technical opinion -- with one sentence of justification.
Result
What changed
This pull request adds a new "Delete My Account" button to account settings that, when clicked, permanently erases a customer's profile, saved payment methods, and order history from the production database. Previously, deleting an account only deactivated the login -- the underlying records stayed in the system.
Who is affected
Any customer who clicks this button going forward. It also affects the Support team, who can no longer look up a deleted customer's past orders to resolve disputes or refunds, and Finance, since deleted orders will disappear from revenue reports for that customer's history.
What could go wrong
1. (Highest risk) A customer disputes a charge after deleting their account -- Support will have no order record to investigate it, because the deletion is immediate and irreversible, not a 30-day soft-delete.
2. A customer accidentally clicks "Delete" instead of "Deactivate" (the buttons are visually similar in this PR) -- there is no confirmation step requiring them to type their email or password.
3. The deletion runs inside the same database transaction as nine other tables. If one of those deletes fails partway through, the code does not roll back the whole transaction -- it could leave a customer in a partially-deleted, broken state.
Reversibility
This is a one-way door. There is no backup-before-delete step in this PR, and no "undo" window. Once a customer clicks delete, the data is gone from production immediately.
Recommendation
Needs more testing before approval. The missing confirmation step and the lack of a grace period before permanent deletion are launch blockers for a feature this irreversible -- not just nice-to-haves.
The problem this solves
Most code review tools and AI coding assistants are built for engineers reviewing engineers' code. But in practice, a lot of risky changes get approved by someone who isn't reading the diff at all — a product manager signing off on a sprint, a founder approving a launch, a client-facing lead greenlighting a vendor's change. They get a one-line Slack summary (“small PR, just a delete feature”) and have to decide anyway. This prompt exists to give that person something better than a vibe check.
Why the structure works
The prompt forces five fixed sections instead of a free-form summary, because a free-form summary lets an AI (or a human) bury the one scary sentence in the middle of a paragraph. “What changed” and “Who is affected” set context without jargon. “What could go wrong” is capped at the 2-4 most realistic scenarios, ranked by severity — not an exhaustive list that drowns the real risk in hypotheticals nobody needs to think about.
The “Reversibility” section is its own line item on purpose. Engineers instinctively know the difference between a config flag they can flip back in five minutes and a database migration that deletes rows forever — but that distinction rarely survives translation into a Slack message. Non-engineers need it spelled out as its own yes/no question, because it's the single factor that should most change how carefully someone reviews before approving.
Why the constraints matter
The “do not minimize risk to sound reassuring” constraint exists because PR descriptions are written by the same person who wants their code merged — they're optimistic by default, not dishonest, but optimistic. An AI assistant that mirrors that optimism back is useless as a check. The constraint to skip code-quality commentary keeps the output focused: this isn't a code review, it's a go/no-go briefing for someone who will never open the file.
Using it well
Paste the actual diff or PR description, not just a title — the model can't assess risk it can't see. Fill in who depends on the system being touched; “who is affected” is only as good as the business context you provide. And treat the four-option recommendation as a starting point for a conversation with the engineer, not a replacement for one — this prompt is a filter for which PRs need five more minutes of your attention, not a final verdict.