Prompting

Prompting that works

A prompt is just your request. Good ones aren't clever — they're clear. Five ingredients cover 95% of it.

The five ingredients

1. The job. What you want, in one sentence.
2. The material. Paste or attach what it should work from.
3. The audience. Who this is for.
4. The shape. How you want the answer: length, format, tone.
5. The rules. What it must and must not do.

You don't need all five every time. But when an answer disappoints, one of these was missing — usually the shape or the material.

Before and after

Vague: "Write something about our new service."

Clear: "Write a 150-word announcement of our new lawn-care package for our existing customers. Friendly, no hype words. Use only the details below: [paste details]. End with 'Reply to book.'"

Same AI. The second one wins every time.

Two habits that beat any trick

• Show an example. "Here's one I liked — match this style" outperforms a paragraph of style adjectives.
• Let it interview you. Can't articulate what you want? Say: "Ask me questions one at a time until you have what you need, then do the job." This is exactly how the playbooks work.

Go deeper

• Prompt builder — assemble a good prompt by filling in blanks.
• Project instructions — write your rules once, reuse them everywhere.
• Prompt library — copy-paste prompts for common jobs.

Next step: The prompt builder