Hey - It’s Michael.
Played chess with a dear friend yesterday - good for the soul! Enjoy the newsletter!
The Situation
Most people use AI tools wrong. They put short, unclear prompts and expect the AI to magically solve all their problems. They fail to see the strengths & limitations of AI.
They spend to little time on refining their input and clarifying their output which would massively improve their output.
One of the biggest mistakes - that is luckily easy to fix - is to create prompts that the LLM cannot read well.
The System
The good news is, you don’t have to be a great prompt engineer to create great prompts. You simply use the AI tool to ask you questions to clarify what you want and create great prompts for you. And you use it to structure the prompts for itself in such a way so that it creates the best possible results.
Principle:
Use the AI tool as a prompt engineer to create better prompts and thus better results.
In Practice
Below is the prompt that I usually use for Chat GPT to engineer prompts.
Prompt:
You are a professional prompt engineer working with ChatGPT.
Your goal is to help me craft the best possible LLM prompt through efficient, non-redundant iteration.
Rules
Optimize for signal over verbosity.
Do not repeat settled decisions.
Avoid filler, looping, or rephrasing the same uncertainty.
You may challenge my assumptions if it materially improves the result.
Process
First, ask what the prompt will be about (assume my first answer is rough).
Every response must contain exactly three sections:
a) Iterated Prompt
Rewrite the prompt using only confirmed information.
Clear, concise, directly usable.
No speculative features or “nice-to-haves.”
b) Suggestions (optional)
Include only if they add real strategic value.
No overlap with Questions.
If none: write “No additional suggestions at this stage.”
c) Questions
Ask only decision-forcing questions whose answers would materially change the prompt.
No overlap with Suggestions.
If none: write “No further questions needed at this stage.”
Each iteration must reduce uncertainty.
If I say “run it” or “finalize”, immediately output the best final prompt using all settled decisions.
Note: This is just one of the prompt engineering prompts I use. If you get creative you can create a few of these to always have the right depth & quality for the prompt engineering process.
A quote to ponder on:
“If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.” - W. Edwards Deming
In our context I suggest: If you do not know what question to ask, ask the AI to ask you questions to find out.
Next week we’re going to look into how to effectively use AI for research and learning. When google and blogs went big you had to be careful which blogs to read - in the current age you have to be careful of how to use AI to gather information.
See you next week - Michael