Product design question
Policy and Legal surface a new multi-step misuse pattern in an agentic workflow a week before a planned deployment, and the customer contract prohibits storing raw prompts. How would you turn that threat model into product requirements, a human-review workflow, and clear enforcement actions?
- OpenAI
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Ability to translate a legal and safety constraint into concrete product requirements under a tight deadline.
How to approach it
- Clarify the exact misuse pattern Policy and Legal found and which agentic workflow steps enable it.
- Confirm what the no-raw-prompt-storage clause actually restricts, versus what logs or metadata are still allowed.
- Turn the threat model into requirements: what inputs or actions to block, rate-limit, or require a human check on.
- Design a human-review workflow that can run without storing raw prompts, for example reviewing redacted or hashed summaries.
- Define enforcement actions for violations, such as session suspension or automatic escalation.
- Confirm the scoped plan with Policy and Legal before the deployment date, and flag if the timeline is not achievable.
What a strong answer includes
- Distinguishes between blocking the misuse pattern outright and adding friction plus review, since blocking may break legitimate use.
- Proposes a concrete review mechanism compatible with the no-storage constraint, like ephemeral review windows or redacted logging.
- States plainly if a week is not enough time and proposes a narrower launch scope instead of a rushed full launch.
- Defines measurable enforcement, such as automatic flags per session, not just a policy statement.
Common mistakes
- Treating this as purely a legal problem and not translating it into product and engineering requirements.
- Assuming logging metadata is fine without confirming it does not count as raw prompt storage.
Likely follow-up questions
- What would you cut from scope if the timeline cannot hold?
- How would you detect the misuse pattern without storing prompts?
- Who owns the decision to delay if requirements are not ready?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovering and Sizing AI Opportunities
- Chapter 7: Designing AI UX and Oversight
- Chapter 14: Interviewing for AI PM Roles