As a product manager, does anyone else feel the same way: a PM's dignity lies in decision-making, but the reality is being stuck in the quagmire of documentation.

My old PRD process used to be: organize meeting notes → draw flowcharts → build the framework → fill in the text → adjust the formatting. Especially when running multiple projects in parallel, a huge amount of energy was spent on "making a sentence read smoothly" and "aligning with historical formats," severely squeezing the time for truly thinking about closed business loops.

I also tried generating directly with general-purpose large models, but the results were unsatisfactory. It was like a "liberal arts student" who didn't understand the business, outputting content that looked flashy but was hollow: it lacked the boundary conditions defined by our team, glossed over exception flows, and often violated interaction specifications. The result was "generation takes 30 seconds, but revision takes half an hour," full of an AI flavor and low on practicality.

A friend recommended I use Trae Work to solve my existing problems, so I built a dedicated PRD automation workflow based on TRAE Work, focusing on these core tasks:

1. Built-in Standards: Fed it the team's PRD templates, field definitions, and interaction specifications, turning it into a "veteran employee who knows the rules."
2. Structured Input: Instead of letting it write from scratch, I had it process meeting recording transcriptions, mind map nodes, or scattered bullet points.
3. Automated Completion: Set up mandatory checks for exception flows and boundary conditions to avoid omissions.

Next, I will walk through the process from start to finish.

1. The Real Dilemmas PMs Face When Writing PRDs

• Scattered Materials, High Integration Cost: Requirements come from various sources: meeting recordings and notes, customer chat logs, online feedback, impromptu brainstorming sessions. The formats of these materials are messy, requiring manual extraction of useful information, filtering out irrelevant chatter, and integrating them into a document framework.

• Difficult to Standardize Documents, Constant Rework: Each PM has different writing habits. Without a fixed process, common issues arise: missing background context, omitted exception branches, lack of interaction rules, no acceptance criteria. Dev and QA frequently ask questions after reading, leading to back-and-forth document revisions.

• Reinventing the Wheel in Iterative Scenarios: When iterating on similar modules, you need to copy old documents, delete outdated content, and add new requirements. This involves a lot of repetitive text work, making it easy to confuse old and new requirements.

• General AI Output Lacks a Product Perspective: Pasting raw materials directly into a generic AI leads to output that leans toward a superficial list of features, missing business objectives, non-functional requirements, and upstream/downstream dependencies. It's far from a deliverable formal PRD.

2. The Complete Standardized PRD Generation Process with TRAE Work

The workflow I built requires no complex configuration; all product colleagues can reuse it directly. It's divided into three steps overall.

1. Material Aggregation and Preprocessing

Consolidate all requirement materials into plain text: communication notes, user pain points, goals for this requirement, new features, constraints. Filter out irrelevant chatter, copy and save them centrally. No need for meticulous formatting; just keep the original information.

• Requirement: Add a batch refund function to the backend order system. Business Background: Currently, merchants can only process refunds one order at a time. When order volume is high, operations are time-consuming, and 60% of customer service feedback indicates that repetitive operations take up a lot of work hours.
  
• Goal: Support selecting multiple orders to initiate refunds in batches, reducing operational costs.
  
• Applicable Role: Backend operations staff.
  
• Constraints: Only supports orders with a status of [Paid, Not Shipped]; a maximum of 20 orders can be selected at a time; cross-store batch refunds are not supported.
  
• Positive Flow: Operations staff selects orders → clicks batch refund → a pop-up confirms the amount → submits the refund request.
  
• Exception Scenarios: If any single order in the batch does not meet the refund conditions, the entire batch cannot be submitted; there needs to be a clear prompt indicating which orders are abnormal and why.
  
• Additional Requirements: Keep operation records, logging the operator, time, and selected order numbers for future reconciliation and troubleshooting.
  
• Not Considered for Now: Partial batch refunds; this time, only full refunds are supported.
  

2. Configuring the Dedicated Work Instruction

You are a senior internet product manager. Based on the requirement materials provided below, output a formal PRD draft that conforms to the team's specifications. The document structure must strictly include:

• 1. Requirement Overview: Business background, goals for this requirement, target audience, launch scope;
     
• 1. Current Status and Pain Points: Problems with the current system;
     
• 1. Detailed Functional Requirements: Positive flow, branch scenarios, exception handling;
     
• 1. Interaction and Page Rules;
     
• 1. Non-functional Requirements: Performance, tracking, compatibility;
     
• 1. Upstream/Downstream Dependencies, Risk Notes;
     
• 1. Acceptance Criteria.
     
• Requirements: Language must be objective and professional, avoid empty adjectives; distinguish between [Must Implement] and [Optional Optimization]; proactively identify missing information in the materials and list items to be confirmed at the end of the document; do not fabricate business information.

Import the instruction and materials together into a new TRAE Work task and start the run.

3. Manual Fine-tuning and Finalization

After the tool outputs the first draft, I usually spend about 10 minutes on final proofreading:

• Check business rules and correct AI comprehension deviations;
• Supplement system-specific terminology;
• Based on the list of items to be confirmed at the end of the document, sync with business and dev teams to complete the information;
• Import into a document tool, add prototype links and screenshots, and synchronize internally directly.

Previously, for a requirement of medium complexity, integrating materials + writing a PRD took at least 2.5 hours. Now, material organization takes 20 minutes + AI generation + fine-tuning takes 30 minutes, compressing the total to under 50 minutes.

As can be seen from the screenshot, the document generated by Trae Work is very clear. Result Link: https://share.traecontent.cn/artifact/BN.2CQZ4E.ZSE3

3. Practical Experience and Pitfall Avoidance Tips

🛠️ Practical Tips (TIPS)

1. Make Instruction Templates Permanent

Don't write prompts from scratch every time. Solidify high-frequency instructions (like backend management, C-end interactions, campaign requirements) into 2-3 sets of templates. When creating a new task, just "call with one click + replace the materials at the bottom," maximizing consistency.

2. Decompose Large Requirements

When facing a giant requirement, avoid "biting off more than you can chew." Split materials by module (like orders, inventory, accounts) and feed them in batches. This effectively prevents AI from experiencing logical confusion and forgetting due to excessively long context.

3. Skillfully Use the 'To-Be-Confirmed List'

Add a mandatory output item to the instruction: "Please list the key information missing from this PRD (Assumptions)." Let the AI help you find omissions and fill gaps, exposing risks before the review.

⚠️ Pitfall Avoidance Guide (WARNINGS)

1. Beware of 'Hallucinations' and 'Unwritten Rules'

AI doesn't understand a company's "historical feuds" or "legacy code." For limitations of historically遗留 systems and offline agreed-upon rules, manual bottom-line verification is a must. Do not blindly trust the generated results.

2. Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)

AI is not a fortune teller. If the materials lack core business objectives or hard constraints, the generated content will inevitably go off track. Be sure to clarify the "why" first, then let the AI write the "how."

3. Correctly Position the 'Assistant'

Don't expect a one-click final draft. View TRAE Work as a "super scratchpad," not the "final deliverer." Mentally accept that it is for generating 80% of the first draft; the remaining 20% of core logic verification is where your core value lies.

4. Extended Scenarios: Beyond PRDs

With slight modifications to the instructions, this workflow can also cover other daily documentation tasks for PMs:

• User research reports, first drafts of competitive analyses;
• Organizing agenda items for requirement review meetings;
• Writing version update notes and launch announcements;
• Compiling online issue post-mortem documents.

With the same workbench, switching instructions can handle most of a PM's copywriting tasks.

5. Conclusion

I've always felt that the true value of a product manager lies in figuring out the "why" and "how," not "how to make a document look pretty." But in actual work, a huge amount of time is indeed consumed by requirement organization and format adjustments.

During this period, using TRAE Work to implement a dedicated workflow, the biggest feeling has been "liberation" — automating those tedious document integration tasks gives me more energy to dig into business pain points and communication details. AI won't make decisions for you, but it can help you clear away distractions. I hope fellow students still struggling in the sea of documentation can also find efficiency tools that suit them, and spend their time where real thinking is needed.