Start
Every item is a prompt to paste, then what to do with what comes back. Organised the way the Home page is: Plan, Ideate, Prototype, then Finish and Keep.
Plan
“I am working on [the thing]. Before you do any of it: tell me what you need from me to do it well, ask me the five questions whose answers would change the result most, and draft the prompt you want me to give you.”
Answer the five. Edit its prompt. Don't write your own.
“Chop [the thing] into the smallest decisions I need to make, in the order I need to make them. One line each. I will answer them in a row.”
Answer them in a row. Fifteen small yeses beat one big maybe.
“Build me a plan for [the thing] with milestones I can hit this week, one line each, and check in on each one with me.”
Cross out the milestone you would skip. Keep the rest.
Ideate
“Give me five ideas for [the thing] I have not considered. One line each.”
“Here is my idea for [the thing]: [idea]. Pressure-test it. What am I missing, what would a sceptic say, what would make it stronger?”
Take the objection that stung. Answer it in the build.
“Based on everything I have told you so far, propose three directions I have not mentioned. Make one of them a stretch.”
Take the one that surprised you. That is where the exponent lives.
Prototype
“Build the roughest working version of [the thing] you can in one pass, and label every place you guessed. I want something to react to, not something finished.”
React to the guesses only. Leave the rest.
“Draw the schematic: the parts of [the thing], how they connect, and the one part you are least sure about. Text or a table. I will correct it.”
Redraw the wrong connection. Name the missing part.
“Here is the draft. Where are the three places someone who knows this subject would stop reading, and why?”
Fix those three. Run it again. Then stop for the day; read it tomorrow before you touch it.
Set the stop conditions (before any long run)
“Before you start, list the conditions under which you should stop and ask me rather than proceed: any claim you cannot source, any convention in this field you are not certain of, any number you would be estimating. I will approve the list.”
Add what it missed. These are your stop conditions for every run after this one.
Borrow the other papers
R2“Read this through the seven R2 levers and tell me where it makes us more relevant, where more reputable, and where it does neither.”
Q2“List the sources this claim rests on, using the Q2 grid: asked, observed or assembled, and what n each would need before I could say it out loud.”
POET“Which of Partnered, Organic, Earned or Targeted does this belong in, and what would a model need to see before it would cite it?”
P3“Give me the five-word version, the two-hundred-word version and the outline of the eight-hundred-word version, each with the proof it needs.”
Per Mille“Who are the Per Mille figures in this domain — the ones the tier below cites — and what would each say is wrong with this?”
Finish
“Strip every word on this list from the text: [the tells list]. Remove every sentence that restates the one before it and every closing sentence that summarises its paragraph. Return only the diff.”
“Replace every generic noun with the specific one. Where you do not know it, leave a bracket and I will fill it.”
“List every factual claim with the source it rests on. Mark the ones you could not source.”
Then the two things only you can do: read it aloud for voice; write the provenance line and sign it.
Keep the tens
“Here are my corrections to your last output, with reasons. Turn them into standing rules I can give you at the start of next time, in under fifteen lines.”
Save the rules. Open the next run with them.