Product owner
Product, design, leadership
Open the review link, see what the agent understood beside what you asked for, correct what differs, and authorize the revision it builds from. No Git, no terminal.
Pathmode for Product ManagersYour product decisions, for coding agents
Catch misunderstandings before your coding agent builds.
Surface missing decisions and conflicts with your product context. Resolve them with your team, then hand your coding agent an agreed spec.
- What you asked for
- “Let customers export their table.”
- The agent understood
- Export the 25 rows on the current page as a CSV file.
Why this matters
The linked request calls for a complete list of matching customers for account reviews. Exporting one page leaves records out.
Source: account-review request · illustrative
The decision
Did you mean the current page, or every filtered result?
The agreed spec
Every filtered result.
Export every matching record using the active filters, regardless of pagination.
You authorize the revised proposal, then hand it to your coding agent.
The problem
Your agent built what the ticket said, not what you meant.
The ticket left it open
The agent filled it in
You found out in the PR
One shared loop
The agent proposes. You decide.
Review what your coding agent intends to build, resolve what matters, and approve the exact revision it builds from.
- 01
Propose
Your agent drafts a proposal from the ticket and code.
- 02
Review
Compare your request with the agent’s interpretation and resolve the key question.
- 03
Authorize & build
Approve a specific revision. The agent builds from it.
- 04
Learn
Check what shipped and feed the results into the next proposal.
Why not just Claude?
Claude helps write and build. Pathmode keeps what you meant connected to what ships.
You could assemble this with Claude, Markdown, GitHub, and team process. Pathmode makes it a system instead of a ritual people must remember.
The result is a reviewed, revision-bound decision that stays portable across agents and connected to the implementation record.
| Product decision | Claude alone | Shared document |  Pathmode + your agent |
|---|---|---|---|
| What carries forward | The conversation and the context you provide | A document people must keep current | The agent’s proposal beside your request, and your decision bound to a repository revision |
| Human authority | Expressed in conversation | Comments, status, or convention | Attributed authorization of the current repository revision |
| Readiness before build | Model-assisted review | A checklist, if the team remembers it | The same deterministic six-gate preflight every time |
| When the decision changes | The team explains the change again | Approvals may remain ambiguous | A changed repository revision needs fresh authorization |
| After implementation | A separate review conversation | The document is updated manually | The linked merged diff is checked against the specified outcomes |
Claude and other coding agents continue to improve. Pathmode’s role is not to limit what they can do; it is to preserve the team’s evidence and authority independently of the executor.
Two roles, one decision
You decide. Your engineer’s agent builds.
Nobody has to live in the other’s tool. The product owner works from a review link; the engineer works from the repository and their agent.
Engineer + agent
Engineers and their coding agents
Hand the ticket to your agent. It proposes from the repository, revises on the product owner’s correction, and builds only from an authorized revision that lives in intent.md beside the code.
Pathmode for Engineering LeadersResearch and design bring evidence when it exists. It attaches to the proposal and stays private outside Git; it is not required to start. Pathmode for Designers & Researchers
The first useful moment
Before the agent starts, know what is missing.
Pathmode’s preflight applies six deterministic readiness checks. It does not declare the decision correct. It exposes gaps your team should resolve or consciously accept before implementation.
Try preflight in your browserWondering where those answers come from? Walk one product decision through it
checkout-timeout.md4/6 · NOT READY
Weak ticket
“Make payment retries smoother.”
× No observable outcome
× No safe retry constraint
→
Repair path
Name when status appears and what must prevent a double charge.
Same input, same verdict
Questions worth asking
What people ask first.
What does Pathmode actually do?+
Your engineer’s coding agent turns a ticket into a proposal for what it will build. Pathmode shows that proposal beside your original request, asks the question whose answer most changes the build, and records your decision at the exact revision the agent builds from. The decision lives as intent.md beside the code. The ticket text, any evidence, and the record of who authorized what stay in the connected workspace. When GitHub is connected, a linked PR merge checks the real diff against the spec.
Do we have to write the spec in Pathmode?+
No. Write the ticket or brief where you already do. Your engineer hands it to their agent, and the agent proposes the intent from the repository and attaches your text verbatim. Your first touch of Pathmode is a review, not a blank page. If no repository is connected yet, you can start from a brief instead.
Why not just do everything in Claude?+
You can use Claude to help draft the proposal and build the code. Pathmode makes the proposal a shared, revision-bound artifact that your team can review and authorize and any coding agent can read. You could assemble that workflow yourself with Claude, Markdown, GitHub, and team process; Pathmode makes it the system instead of a ritual people must remember.
Does Pathmode decide what we should build?+
No. Product judgment stays human. Pathmode makes the agent’s interpretation, the assumptions, outcomes, and trade-offs inspectable; its preflight flags missing or vague parts without pretending that a passing spec is automatically the right decision.
What does agreeing with a proposal record?+
Authorization. When the proposal says what you meant, you authorize implementation, and Pathmode records who authorized which exact revision and when. The record covers the whole proposal, not single behaviors: there is no per-behavior confirm, because there is no per-behavior record behind it. A correction is separate. It asks the repository agent to revise the proposal and authorizes nothing.
Do we need evidence before reviewing a proposal?+
No. A proposal can reach review and authorization without evidence. Attach tickets, interviews, or metrics when you have them; they stay private outside Git and back the claims they support.
What happens when I request a correction?+
The correction goes back to the repository agent to revise the proposal. It does not authorize a build or silently change intent.md. Review the revised proposal before authorizing implementation.
Do developers need another tool or account?+
Not for the local workflow. The free MCP tool writes and reads intent.md in the repository and runs preflight without an account or API key. Connect a workspace when the team needs the review link, private evidence, recorded authorization, and the delivery loop outside Git.
Go deeper
The thinking behind the workflow.
Three short reads on why the product decision needs its own durable place in an AI-native delivery loop.
Intent Engineering
Why Jira Tickets Fail AI Agents
Jira coordinates human work. AI coding agents treat every omission as room to guess. The ticket can stay, but the product decision needs to live with the code.
Read article
Intent Engineering
The Repo Gets the Decision
Why Pathmode moved its center of gravity into the repository, made intent.md authoritative, and narrowed the hosted product to what a file cannot do.
Read article
Intent Engineering
The First Artifact Has No Readiness Gate
Anthropic's AI-native SDLC playbook puts explicit controls around every stage after intent.md. The first artifact gets human review, but no repeatable readiness check. I built one, calibrated it against 98 examples, and put the verdict inside the file.
Read articleReview the proposal before it becomes code.
An account connects the repository and the team. The preflight is free and local, and needs neither.