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
Adrian Novak
Deputy editor, Prompt After Prompt
Adrian has written about prompt craft, writing with ai, images & audio for most of the last decade and prefers a plain explanation to a clever one.
Prompt Craft
Asking the tool to play a role moves the vocabulary more than the judgement
Persona framing is real and it does something, but what it mostly does is select a register, and mistaking…
· 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
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
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
Prompt Craft
Ask for the format your next step needs, not the one that looks tidy
Output that a person finds readable and output that a program can consume are different requests, and…
· 4 min read
Writing With AI
Asking for a critique gets you praise with a caveat attached
Feedback on your own work comes back systematically kinder than it should, and getting something useful…
· 3 min read
Pitfalls
Some things stay yours because the consequences do
Deciding what never to hand over is a judgement about responsibility and relationships rather than about…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Rewriting a piece for a different reader changes the argument, not just the words
Asking for a version aimed at another audience usually returns the same structure with the vocabulary…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Working up your own notes is the case where drafting help is least risky
When the substance already exists in rough form, the task becomes ordering and expressing rather than…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Handing over a working process means handing over the failures too
A colleague can run your steps within an hour and still cannot own the process, because what you actually…
· 4 min read
Workflows
Measure the whole task, or you will keep believing the fast part
Time savings are usually estimated from the step that got faster, while the checking, fixing and rework…
· 3 min read
Pitfalls
Material that has already been through the tool is a poor input for the next step
Generated text fed back in as source loses its remaining specifics with each pass, and the loss is…
· 3 min read
Prompt Craft
Ask for the criteria before the verdict, and the verdict has to live with them
Ordering a request so that the standards are written down before the judgement is made gives you something…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Matching one person’s voice from samples reproduces their habits, not their judgement
Supplying examples of how somebody writes gets you their surface reliably and their thinking not at all…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
A quotation that came back through the draft is no longer a quotation
Verbatim material does not survive a drafting pass intact, and the alterations are small, plausible and…
· 3 min read
Images & Audio
A picture of a person who does not exist still resembles somebody
Generated human figures are the part of an image with consequences attached, and the practical questions…
· 4 min read