Petit test
Guess first, no penalty. Marketing says the app has 52,000 active users. Product says 31,000. Both used AI to write the query. What is the most likely reason?
A metric is a number the business tracks, like active users or revenue. Every metric hides choices: which users, which actions, which dates, which test accounts to leave out. When nobody writes them down, every team and every AI prompt makes its own.
That's why the definition is your job, not the AI's. A short written definition settles the choices once, gives the AI the exact rule, and lets anyone check the number later.
A useful definition has five parts:
- Name: one name, used everywhere.
- Rule: the exact logic, in plain words.
- Includes and excludes: test accounts, staff, refunds, other edge cases.
- Source: the table and columns it comes from.
- Owner: who decides when the rule changes.