When a designer says "send the feedback to the agent," two different people will picture two different things. One pictures a Loom link pasted into a chat. Another pictures a tidy markdown file with numbered items and image URLs. Only one of those actually gets fixed. The difference is whether the feedback is a real artifact with a known shape, or just a gesture toward one.
Below are the terms you need to talk about this without hand-waving. Each one is defined as a thing with a format, not as a feeling.
Agent feedback, the artifact
Agent feedback. A text file, almost always markdown, that describes what is wrong or what should change on a specific screen, in a form an AI coding agent can read directly as input. It contains an ordered list of items. Each item has a written instruction and, when relevant, a link to a screenshot the agent can fetch.
The practical test is simple. If you paste the file into Cursor or Claude Code and the agent can act without asking you what you meant, it is agent feedback. If the agent has to watch a video, guess at a timestamp, or open a Figma comment thread, it is not. For the long form of this distinction, see how agent feedback differs from human feedback as a deliverable.
Required fields in an item
An item in an agent feedback file has three parts that matter:
- A stable identifier. Usually a number. The agent uses it to track which items it has handled and to report back.
- A written instruction. One or two sentences in plain language describing the change. "The submit button label reads Submit but should read Save changes" is an instruction. "Button looks off" is not.
- A reference, when the change is visual. A URL to a screenshot, or a numbered pin coordinate, or a quoted piece of on-screen text. The reference grounds the instruction in something the agent can verify.
Items without a screenshot are fine if the instruction is purely textual ("change the page title to Settings"). Items with a screenshot but no instruction are not fine, because the agent has to guess what about the picture matters.
Adjacent terms people confuse with agent feedback
Agent-readable feedback. A near synonym, with a slightly broader scope. Agent-readable means the file can be parsed by an LLM at all: it is text, it has structure, references resolve. Agent feedback is the subset of agent-readable content that is specifically a list of requested changes. The full breakdown of agent-readable feedback covers the parsing side in more detail.
Markdown bug report. A specific genre of agent feedback focused on defects rather than general changes. Same format, narrower content. See markdown bug reports for the bug-specific conventions.
Screenshot prompt. A single image plus a single instruction, pasted into a chat with the agent. This is the smallest unit of agent feedback: one item, no list. The screenshot-to-prompt pattern is what you use when you have exactly one change to ask for.
Review link. A URL pointing at a hosted version of the review (for example /r/abc123). The review link is for humans. The markdown export at /r/abc123/markdown is for agents. Same content, two renderings. People with the link can comment on individual items; an agent reading the markdown cannot.
Pin. A numbered marker on a screenshot pointing at a specific spot. Pins matter because they let an instruction say "the icon at pin 2" instead of "the icon near the top right, you know, the gray one."
What agent feedback is not
Not a video. Video is opaque to an agent. An agent cannot scrub to 0:42 and read the tooltip. A Loom recording of a review is human feedback even if you mean it for an agent. The reasons video fails as agent input are mostly about this opacity.
Not a ticket. An agent feedback file does not have assignees, statuses, due dates, or sprint labels. Adding those fields does not make it better; it makes it a project-management record that happens to contain change requests. The agent ignores them.
Not a transcript. Raw dictation is not agent feedback. "Okay so this button, uh, the color is wrong, also the spacing" is a transcript. The same content rewritten as "Item 3: change the primary button background from #4A90E2 to #2C5FAF and increase the top margin to 24px" is agent feedback. Dictation is fine as input to writing the file; it is not the file itself.
Not a Figma comment thread. Figma comments live behind authentication and are tied to design files rather than the built product. An agent working on the implemented code cannot resolve them.
How the format is produced in practice
You capture screens of the built product, add written or dictated comments to each, optionally drop pins, and publish. The output is a review the human stakeholders read at the public link, plus a markdown file at the same URL with /markdown appended. The markdown is the agent feedback artifact. You hand the URL to Cursor, Claude Code, or another agent, and it reads the file and the linked images directly.
If you want to see the full shape, open a fresh review, add two or three items, and look at the markdown export. The format will be obvious from a single example, and the anatomy of an agent-readable bug report walks through one item by item.
Use the word "agent feedback" specifically. Reserve it for the artifact. When someone on the team says it, everyone should picture the same kind of file.