Prompt Craft
An instruction that only works once was underspecified, not unlucky
The gap between a prompt that produced something good and a prompt you can rely on is a list of decisions…
· 4 min read
Prompt After Prompt — Working with the tools, not about them
Prompt Craft
An instruction that only works once was underspecified, not unlucky
The gap between a prompt that produced something good and a prompt you can rely on is a list of decisions you left open without noticing.
By Adrian Novak · · 4 min read
What makes an instruction work twice, not once.
Prompt Craft
Two worked examples teach a format that a page of rules will not
Rules describe the edges of what you will accept, examples describe the middle of it, and for anything with…
· 4 min read
Prompt Craft
Saying what you do not want is the half of the instruction people leave out
Describing the output you want narrows the field far less than it feels like it does, and the difference is…
· 4 min read
Prompt Craft
Describe the shape of the answer before you describe the task
Output structure is the single constraint that decides the most about what comes back, and it is usually…
· 4 min read
Drafting, editing and the point at which the tool stops helping.
Writing With AI
Restarting a draft usually beats the fourth round of corrections
Corrections accumulate as patches on a structure that was wrong to begin with, and there is a point past…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Handing over the editing is a different bargain from handing over the writing
Used as a first-draft machine these tools cost you the thinking; used as an editor they cost you almost…
· 4 min read
Writing With AI
Anything only you know is the part the draft will be missing
Generated prose is assembled from what is widely available, so the material that makes a piece worth…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Generated prose drifts towards the middle of everything it has read
The pull towards the average is not a stylistic flaw to be corrected with better adjectives; it is what the…
· 3 min read
Generating pictures and sound, and the controls that actually matter.
Images & Audio
An image prompt describes a picture, not the scene it depicts
Most disappointing results come from writing a story and expecting a photograph, when what the tool needs…
· 4 min read
Images & Audio
Changing one thing at a time is the only way to learn what an image prompt does
Image prompts accumulate untested words because everything is edited at once, and a habit that costs a few…
· 4 min read
Images & Audio
Anything that has to be counted should not be asked of an image generator
A handful of failures recur across every tool in this class, they share a cause, and the practical response…
· 4 min read
Images & Audio
Describing the light and the lens gets further than naming a style
Style words are the least portable and least predictable part of an image prompt, and the physical…
· 3 min read
Chaining steps together so the result is repeatable rather than lucky.
Workflows
One long instruction hides which step failed
A single prompt that extracts, judges and writes gives you no way to tell which of those three went wrong…
· 4 min read
Workflows
A workflow without a checking step ships its worst output
Any process that produces plausible results at volume will eventually produce a plausible wrong one, and…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Long inputs sag in the middle and the fix is structural
Supplying more material does not straightforwardly mean more of it gets used, and building around that…
· 4 min read
Workflows
A prompt you cannot find again is not part of a workflow
Instructions that live in chat history are irrecoverable in practice, and treating them as artefacts with a…
· 3 min read
The confident wrong answer, and how to catch it before it ships.
Pitfalls
Catching a wrong answer means checking the claim, not asking again
Verification has to touch something outside the conversation, and every technique that stays inside it is a…
· 3 min read
Pitfalls
Fluent, well organised and about nothing: the output to throw away
Some results are not improvable by editing because there is nothing underneath the prose, and learning to…
· 4 min read
Pitfalls
A tool that agrees with you has not confirmed anything
Agreement is close to free, which makes it worthless as evidence and dangerous as a habit, particularly…
· 3 min read
Pitfalls
What you paste in is a decision you have already made
The information you supply leaves your control at the moment you send it, and most of the thinking about…
· 3 min read
Two worked examples teach a format that a page of rules will not
Saying what you do not want is the half of the instruction people leave out
Describe the shape of the answer before you describe the task
Asking the tool to play a role moves the vocabulary more than the judgement
Restarting a draft usually beats the fourth round of corrections
Handing over the editing is a different bargain from handing over the…
Anything only you know is the part the draft will be missing
Generated prose drifts towards the middle of everything it has read