Guides
Tips and tricks
Small habits that compound — steering instead of restarting, quoting the bit you mean, front-loading the important instruction, and knowing when to open a fresh task.
None of these are clever. They are the differences between people who get good answers quickly and people who fight the same conversation for twenty minutes.
Steer, do not restart
The reply is 80% right? Say what is wrong with it. “Keep the structure, but the second section should cover cost, not timeline” is one round trip. Rewriting the original prompt and starting again throws away the 80% that worked.
Restart only when the whole framing was wrong — and then start a new task, not a new paragraph in the old one.
Quote the part you mean
“Fix the third paragraph” is ambiguous by the time there are two drafts on screen. Paste the sentence, or point at it. Inside an app you can literally click the element; in a document, quoting three words removes all doubt.
Put the important instruction first
Long messages get skimmed by models much as they do by people. The critical constraint goes at the top, not buried after three paragraphs of background.
If a message really needs a wall of background, split it: context first, then a short message with the actual request.
One task, one topic
Tasks carry their history. A task that starts as a budget and drifts into hiring plans drags budget context into every hiring answer. Start a new task when the subject genuinely changes — they are cheap.
Say what you have already ruled out
“We are not moving off Postgres” saves you three paragraphs recommending you move off Postgres. Stating the closed doors is faster than closing them afterwards.
Give it the failure mode
“If the file does not contain the figure, say so — do not estimate” turns an invented number into a useful “not in the document”. Models comply with explicit escape hatches; without one, they fill the gap.
Ask for options, not just an answer
“Give me three approaches with the trade-off of each” is often more useful than “what should we do”, especially early on. You are the one with the context that decides between them.
Watch the length you asked for
“Brief” is not a length. “Under 200 words” or “at most five bullets” is. If you find yourself trimming every reply by hand, put the number in the prompt.
Use the right container
| You want | Ask for |
|---|---|
| Numbers you will change later | A spreadsheet |
| Something to present | A deck |
| Something to edit together | A document |
| Something people will use | An app |
Asking for the artifact rather than the text is the difference between output you work with and output you retype.
Save the ones that work
When a prompt gets you exactly what you wanted, save it — with blanks where the specifics go. See Saved prompts. Most people’s best prompt is one they wrote once and then lost in a task from March.
Next
Advanced principles — how to think about prompts you will keep and reuse.