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About this tool
Create a technical design doc template with goals, non-goals, alternatives, risks and rollout, in the format your team needs.
This generator produces a ready-to-fill technical specification template in one of three established formats: a Google-style design doc with objective, goals, non-goals and proposed design; an RFC in the style used by the Rust and React projects; or an Architecture Decision Record in Michael Nygard's Status/Context/Decision/Consequences format. Engineers and tech leads pick the format, toggle sections like risks, rollout and alternatives, and get clean Markdown with guidance notes in every section.
Open Tech Spec Template Generator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Provide your input — an image, text, or data.
Let the tool analyze or generate the result.
Review, refine, and reuse the output wherever you need it.
Google-style design doc, Rust/React-style RFC, or Nygard ADR — not an invented structure.
Each heading carries an italic prompt explaining what a good answer looks like, so blank-page paralysis is gone.
Optional sections add risk tables, rollout checklists, success metrics and milestone tables.
A strong design doc has an objective, explicit goals, non-goals, the proposed design, and alternatives considered — the structure popularised by Google's internal design docs. High-stakes changes add security and privacy, risks with mitigations, a rollout plan and success metrics, all of which this template can include.
A design doc explains how one team will build something and is reviewed before implementation; an RFC proposes a change for broad comment across teams, with explicit drawbacks and unresolved questions; an ADR records a single architecture decision after it is made, in Michael Nygard's four-part format of Status, Context, Decision and Consequences. Pick by audience and timing: design docs before building, RFCs for cross-team consensus, ADRs as a permanent decision log.
Non-goals state what the project deliberately will not do, which prevents scope creep and stops reviewers re-litigating settled boundaries. They are the cheapest section to write and the one that saves the most debate — a reader who expects a feature can see in one line that it was excluded on purpose.
An ADR should fit on one to two pages — one decision per record. Design docs and RFCs are typically three to ten pages depending on blast radius; if a doc is longer than the reviewers will actually read, split it or move detail to an appendix. The template's guidance notes push each section toward the shortest useful answer.