Write Your Acceptance Criteria Before You Let AI Touch the Code

Welcome to a new episode of tips on AI vibe coding. Except it’s not really vibe coding — it’s how to use AI more efficiently during your development. That’s what I actually mean by it.

Tip number one: write your acceptance criteria — and write the tests — during the plan, even before you start development.

I mean, that’s a useful technique, to be honest. It’s a common technique in normal software development. But now, with AI, a lot of people aren’t used to following that best practice anymore.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons you believe your AI is hallucinating, or this kind of stuff.

Now, you can just ask AI to write the acceptance criteria — or the tests, anyway. And because AI is so long-winded about describing everything, I used to say: “Hey, please describe using —”

• Numbered
• One valid point per line
• Not nested
• Very simple

You know.

This is useful for a couple of things.

First, because this way, during the plan, you can ask AI to recheck all the points, and you will never miss a requirement.

Second — and that’s another tip — you can basically ask AI to test it autonomously.

It’s not hallucinating. It just never got the requirements.