S-Tier Prompt Writing

Every answer the AI gives has a reader.

Someone has to read it. Use it. Learn from it. That someone changes everything. The words it picks. How deep it goes. What it assumes you already know.

But the AI can't see that person.

So unless you tell it, it writes for nobody in particular. And a thing written for nobody in particular fits nobody in particular.

This is not the role.

Easy to mix these two up. They're both "who" questions.

The role is who the AI is. A chemistry teacher. A coach. An editor. You set that in the last layer.

The audience is who the answer is for. The person on the receiving end.

Two different dials.

Picture a chemistry teacher explaining acids to a high school student using simple everyday terms. Now picture the same teacher explaining it to a chemical engineer. Same role. Same teacher. Two answers that sound nothing alike.

The role decides who's talking. The audience decides who's listening. You want both.

Sometimes the reader is you.

A lot of the time, you're the audience. You're trying to learn something, understand something, get through something.

So tell it about you.

Your profession. What you already know. What always trips you up. How you like things explained (e.g. "use simple everyday terms").

The AI defaults to some average student who doesn't exist. You're not average at anything. You're ahead in some spots and behind in others. When it knows where you actually stand, it can meet you there. Instead of talking over your head, or wasting your time on stuff you already have.

Sometimes the reader is someone else.

Other times you're making something to hand off.

An email to your boss. A project update for the marketing team. A summary your whole study group is going to use.

Now the audience isn't you. It's them. So give it context about them.

Your boss is formal and busy. The marketing team prefers bullet points. Your group already sat through the lecture and just needs the messy parts cleaned up.

Same request, different reader, different result. The marketing team's version of an update is not the version you send your boss.

See it in action.

Watch what one line of audience does.

Without it:

You get a wall. Alliances, militarism, imperialism, nationalism, an assassination. All correct. All dense. Pitched at no one, so probably pitched wrong for you.

With it:

Now it starts from zero. It builds the tension logically. It uses simple everyday words. Same facts, aimed at an actual person.

You didn't ask for more. You asked for it to land.

You've told it who it is. Now you've told it who it's for.
Next, you'll tell it what's actually going on. That's Your Situation.