A prompt is every word you send to an AI. The model has no memory of you, no intuition about your situation, and cannot read between the lines. It generates the most statistically useful continuation of exactly what you wrote.
Quality in = quality out. Learning to write better prompts is the single highest-leverage skill in AI — and it costs nothing.
02 Weak vs. Strong
EX 01Requesting time off
Write a professional email from me (a software engineer at a 40-person startup) to my manager, Priya Sharma, requesting 5 days off: December 23–27 for the holidays.
Context:
- My current project (payment gateway integration) will be merged and in staging by Dec 20
- No on-call rotation scheduled for me that week
- Our team communicates async, so a short email is fine
Requirements:
- Tone: warm but not overly formal — we have a good working relationship
- Length: under 100 words
- End with: offer to discuss if it creates any issues, mention I'll set an out-of-office
→ Why it works
Manager named. Dates exact. Work status explained. Team culture noted. Tone, length, and closing action specified.
EX 02Getting a usable recipe
I need a weeknight chicken dinner for 2 people.
What I have: chicken thighs (bone-in), garlic, lemon, fresh rosemary, olive oil, canned white beans, chicken stock, parmesan.
Constraints:
- Total time: under 35 minutes (I get home at 7 PM)
- No other dairy — my partner is lactose intolerant (parmesan is fine)
- I'm a confident cook, don't oversimplify techniques
Format: one intro sentence (what the dish is), then ingredient list with amounts, then numbered steps. Add a note if anything can be prepped the night before.
02The AI knows nothing about you unless you tell it
03Vague prompt → generic answer. Specific prompt → tailored answer.
04First output is a draft, not a final answer — iterate
05The AI mirrors your tone: casual input gets casual output
04 Model-Specific Notes
Claude handles natural conversational prompts well, but explicit constraints always outperform implied ones. Direct and specific gets better results than polite and vague.
05 For Your Role
Think of it like texting a very smart friend who just met you. They're brilliant, but they know nothing about your life unless you explain it.