The Slop Prevention Checklist

A real spec Written down. Plain English. Describes the goal, not the keystrokes.
Acceptance criteria How will you know the change is correct? List the conditions before prompting.
Known data model changes New tables, columns, migrations. Decided up front, not improvised mid-prompt.
Permission & security requirements Who can do this? What can they see? What stops them from seeing more?
Error states What goes wrong, what the user sees, and what gets logged. AI will not invent these for you.
Test expectations Which behavior is verified by tests, and which is verified by humans before merge.
Review plan A specific human reviews this before merge. They understand what it does. Not optional.
Rollback plan If this is wrong in production, how do you reverse it — in minutes, not days?
A human owner A named person who can explain this code in a year. AI is not an owner.

Boxes don’t save — this is a thinking tool, not a CRM. Steal the list. Paste it into your PR template. Tape it to your monitor.