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
Naina Sethi
Consumer editor, Prompt After Prompt
Naina covers prompt craft, writing with ai, images & audio and the questions readers actually send in and is happiest when a piece answers the question completely.
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
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
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
Synthetic narration is punctuated speech and the punctuation is the control
Generated voice follows the structure of the text far more closely than it follows any instruction about…
· 4 min read
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
Prompt Craft
Making it ask you questions costs less than three failed attempts
A request to list the ambiguities before starting work turns the silent guesses that ruin a first draft…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Short writing is where a pile of options actually earns its keep
For headlines, subject lines and names the cost of generating a hundred candidates is trivial and the value…
· 4 min read
Images & Audio
A written style specification is what makes a set of pictures look related
Images generated one at a time will not sit together, and the fix is a short reusable document describing…
· 3 min read
Images & Audio
Starting from a photograph you already have is a more controllable problem
Supplying an existing picture as the basis of a generation replaces the hardest part of image prompting…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Waiting time and cost per item are design decisions, not details
A process that is pleasant at one item and unusable at a thousand usually failed on arithmetic rather than…
· 3 min read
Pitfalls
A summary you accepted is a document you have not read
Condensing long material is one of the most trusted uses of these tools and one of the least examined…
· 3 min read
Prompt Craft
Rewrite the question until the answer is one you could check
Where you have no way to verify what comes back, the practical move is to change the question rather than…
· 4 min read
Writing With AI
A house style holds across fifty pieces only if it is written down as rules
Consistency across a body of work is an operational problem rather than a stylistic one, and the parts that…
· 3 min read
Images & Audio
Generating an element is easier than generating a picture
Single objects, textures and backgrounds are the most reliable output of an image generator, and they fit…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Pulling fields out of messy documents works, and the empty ones decide whether it is usable
Extraction is among the most reliable things these tools do, provided the process treats a missing value as…
· 3 min read
Workflows
The step you have specified perfectly should probably be code
A prompt that has been refined until it never varies is describing a deterministic operation, and…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
Harvest the paragraphs worth keeping before you throw the draft away
Between patching a failing draft and starting again there is a step most people skip, which is going…
· 3 min read
Writing With AI
The tenth piece on your subject repeats the second unless you plan against it
Working on one subject over a long stretch produces a body of writing that converges, and the convergence…
· 3 min read
Images & Audio
Asking a tool to describe a picture is reliable about the subject and not about the detail
Reading images rather than generating them is a genuinely useful capability with a specific failure…
· 3 min read
Workflows
Most of the work in a document process happens before the tool sees anything
Getting source material into a state where it can be processed at all is usually the larger half of the…
· 3 min read
Pitfalls
Approving work you did not watch being made
Sign-off assumes the reviewer can infer how a document was produced from reading it, and that assumption…
· 4 min read
Pitfalls
The cost of a document you generated is paid by whoever has to read it
Making written material cheap to produce does not make it cheap to consume, and the difference is absorbed…
· 4 min read