I am the OP, and I don't think I've ever had a project or product manager who gave me sufficient detail such that all I had to do was walk away and "write code."

Problem solving skills required and a bunch of questions. What really do you need, how important is each part of it, and who are the other people I need to talk to help make this happen? Being able to ask those questions and produce code from the answers is what we get paid the big bucks for.

At least for now.