Assemble the output contract of your feature

Lesson objective

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to assemble the full output contract of a feature in your product (consumers, mechanism, schema, validation, exceptions, version, 20 cases and thresholds), self-assess it and plan how to apply it over 7 and 30 days.

Where it fits

Your output contract

How do I assemble the output contract of a feature in my product and apply it over the next 30 days?

Lessons in this module

1. Assemble the output contract of your feature (this lesson)

What you will learn in the course

This lesson is part of the course Get reliable, product-ready AI outputs (JSON, schemas, function calling)

• Diagnose where free-text output breaks a feature and decide which outputs require a contract.
• Choose between instructions alone, JSON mode, structured outputs and function calling for a given need, and justify the choice.
• Design an output schema (types, enums, required fields, nullable fields, descriptions, "unknown" values) where every field serves a consumer.
• Specify validation (syntax, schema, business rules), retries, handling of refusals and truncation, and the fallback path.
• Version and evolve an output contract without breaking its consumers, accounting for provider differences and the split of roles between PM and developers.
• Build a set of 20 robustness cases and set acceptance thresholds before going to production.

Related courses

• Build an AI assistant for your productAdvanced · ~3 hr
• Design a RAG architecture that fits your productAdvanced · ~3 hr 30 min
• Evaluate an AI feature: test sets, metrics and LLM judgesAdvanced · ~3 hr