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OpenPRD

OpenPRD is a lightweight, open standard for product requirements documents authored by humans or AI agents, maintained by Profullstack, Inc. as part of the LogicSRC open-standards surface.

It borrows the shape of a BIP/EIP/DIP process: a repo keeps a numbered, committed collection of PRDs under prd/, each one a single Markdown file with a fixed set of sections and a lifecycle. Where OpenSpec models a change as a multi-file bundle, OpenPRD models a product decision as one numbered file you can read a year from now to recover the why.

Tools such as the moshcode CLI consume this standard to publish PRDs into whatever repo you're working in. LogicSRC ships its own reference implementation — see Implementation.

When to write one

Write a PRD when a change introduces or reshapes a product capability — a new feature, surface, or user-facing behavior whose requirements deserve to be agreed before code lands. Small, obvious changes just get a PR. If you're unsure, write a short one; three paragraphs is fine.

Directory layout

prd/
  README.md            # index of PRDs (generated/maintained by tooling)
  0000-template.md     # the OpenPRD template — copy to start a new PRD
  0001-<slug>.md       # numbered PRDs, one file each
  0002-<slug>.md
  • PRDs are committed to the repo (public within that repo) — like dips/, not gitignored.
  • One file per PRD: prd/<id>-<slug>.md, where <id> is the four-digit number and <slug> is a kebab-case summary of the title.

Numbering

Four-digit, zero-padded, monotonically increasing, no gaps: 0001, 0002, 0003. 0000 is reserved for the template. Assign the next free number when the PRD is created — don't reserve in advance.

Lifecycle

Draft  →  Review  →  Accepted  →  Final
                  ↘  Rejected
                  ↘  Withdrawn
                  ↘  Superseded by NNNN
  • Draft — author is still iterating.
  • Review — open for discussion (typically on the PR that introduces the PRD).
  • Accepted — requirements agreed; implementation may begin.
  • Final — implementation shipped; the PRD is now historical record. Don't edit a Final PRD except for typos — open a follow-up that supersedes it.
  • Rejected / Withdrawn / Superseded — kept on disk; the why is part of the record.

Status lives in the front-matter and is the source of truth.

Manifest (front-matter)

Every PRD opens with a YAML front-matter block validated by openprd-prd.schema.json:

---
openprd: "0.2"            # standard version (required)
id: "0001"               # 4-digit number == filename prefix (required)
title: Expand the parked-domain service   # imperative title (required)
status: Draft            # Draft|Review|Accepted|Final|Rejected|Withdrawn|Superseded (required)
authors:                 # at least one
  - anthony@profullstack.com
repo: moshcoder/moshcoding   # optional target repo (owner/name)
created: 2026-07-12      # optional ISO date
updated: 2026-07-12      # optional ISO date
discussion:              # optional URL to the PR/issue/thread
implementation:          # optional URL to the impl PR/tracking issue
tags: [growth]           # optional labels
supersedes:              # optional 4-digit id this PRD replaces
superseded-by:           # optional 4-digit id that replaces this PRD
---

Body sections

The body is Markdown with a fixed, ordered set of ## sections. All are required (a section MAY be a single line such as _None._), which keeps every PRD skimmable and diffable:

  1. ## Problem — the user/business problem, and why it matters now.
  2. ## Goals — what success looks like, as outcomes (not features).
  3. ## Non-Goals — explicitly out of scope, to bound the work.
  4. ## Users — who this is for; personas or segments.
  5. ## Requirements — numbered R1, R2, … each prefixed with a priority tag [P0]/[P1]/[P2]. One capability per line.
  6. ## UX Notes — flows, states, and constraints that shape the experience.
  7. ## Success Metrics — how the goals will be measured.
  8. ## Risks & Open Questions — known risks and decisions still owed.

See 0000-template.md for the copy-paste template.

Relationship to LogicSRC

OpenPRD is intentionally decoupled from the rest of LogicSRC: a PRD is just a file and needs no service to exist. When coordination is wanted, a PRD's Requirements map cleanly onto LogicSRC task documents (each R# → one task), and owner/repo reuse LogicSRC identity and repo conventions. That bridge is optional and lives in tooling, not in this standard.

Implementation

@logicsrc/openprd is the reference implementation, exposed through the LogicSRC CLI. A PRD is still just a file: nothing below is required for a document to conform.

logicsrc prd init                      # create prd/ with the template and an index
logicsrc prd new "Expand the service"  # next free number, filled front-matter, eight stub sections
logicsrc prd list                       # id, title, status, tags, requirement count
logicsrc prd show 0001                  # front-matter, sections, and parsed requirements
logicsrc prd validate --strict          # conformance + lint, exit 1 on error
logicsrc prd index --write              # regenerate prd/README.md from what is on disk
logicsrc prd status 0001 Review         # lifecycle move, refusing illegal transitions
logicsrc prd tasks 0001                 # the optional LogicSRC task bridge

Validation separates the four conformance rules below from lint. Conformance failures are errors; everything else — an empty section, a requirement with no priority tag, numbering that skips, a stale index, a one-sided supersession link — is a warning or a note, and --strict promotes them. Findings carry stable codes (OP-C-SECTION-ORDER, OP-L-REQ-DUPLICATE, …), the file, the line, and a remediation hint. Exit codes: 0 ok, 1 invalid, 2 usage, 3 not found.

The lifecycle is enforced rather than advisory: Draft cannot jump to Final, terminal statuses do not resume, and moving to Superseded requires naming the PRD that replaces it.

Requirement numbering, id uniqueness, and "no gaps" are checked across the whole collection, not just per file — a repo with 0001 and 0003 and no 0002 fails.

Task bridge

The optional mapping described above lives in tooling:

logicsrc prd tasks 0001 --priority P0 --format ndjson

Each R# becomes one logicsrc.task document, validated against logicsrc-task.schema.json before it is emitted. The board defaults to /prd/<id>, repo carries over to github_repo, and the creator DID is derived from the first author (anthony@profullstack.com → anthony.profullstack) unless --creator says otherwise.

Conformance bundle

packages/schemas/fixtures/openprd/ holds fixtures a third-party implementation can run: conformance.json lists documents that must validate and documents that must fail, each with the error code it must produce. Because several rules depend on the filename, each fixture records the name it must be validated as.

Conformance

A document conforms to OpenPRD 0.2 when:

  • it lives at prd/<id>-<slug>.md with a four-digit <id>,
  • its front-matter validates against openprd-prd.schema.json,
  • id equals the filename's numeric prefix, and
  • all eight body sections are present in order.