The idea
Search bar vs briefing
A search bar takes scraps and guesses. AI follows your words literally. Give it scraps and it fills the gaps with bland filler that fits anyone and helps no one.
AI Made Simple . explainer 11You typed a search,
You typed a search,
not an instruction.
Your AI is not dumb. You are briefing it like a search bar. Below, take one lazy prompt and add four ingredients, one tap at a time, and watch the answer go from generic mush to ready-to-send.
Three things to know before we play.
01
A search bar wants a few keywords. AI wants a full instruction. Most people type the keywords and get mush.
02
The AI answers exactly what you typed, nothing more. Give it a thin request and you get a thin answer back.
03
A good prompt has four parts: who you are, what you are doing, what you want, and how it should look.
Try it yourself
Fix one lazy prompt, live.
On the left is a prompt so thin it could be anyone’s. Tap in the four ingredients one at a time and watch the answer on the right sharpen with each one.
Your prompt
Write me an email.
What the AI sends backGeneric mush
Dear Valued Customer,
I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to inform you regarding an important update concerning your recent order with our establishment.
Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions.
Add the next ingredient
Scripted before and after, not a live AI. A real prompt would give you something like this. The point is the recipe, not the exact words.
The plain-English why
So why was the first answer so bland?
Because you asked a question a million people could have asked. “Write me an email” has no you in it, no situation, no goal. So the AI does the only safe thing it can: it writes the most average email in the world, the one that fits everybody and lands with nobody. It was not being lazy. It was being careful with almost nothing to go on. The moment you add who you are and what you actually need, the average answer becomes your answer. Same tool, same second, far more useful. The skill people call prompting is really just briefing well.
The idea
Brief it like a new hire
Imagine handing the task to a smart new hire on day one. You would tell them who you are, what is going on, what you need, and what good looks like. Tell the AI the same.
The idea
Four parts, any task
Who you are, what you are doing, exactly what you want, how it should look. The same four ingredients work for an email, a plan, a post, or a price quote.
The recipe
The four-part prompt, for any task.
First, say who you are. One line of context, like “I run a small bakery,” changes every answer that follows. Second, say what is actually going on, the real situation, not a tidy summary of it. Third, say exactly what you want the AI to do, the actual job, not a vague direction. Fourth, say how it should look: how long, how formal, what shape. Miss the fourth and you get a great answer in the wrong format. Hit all four and you have briefed it like you would brief a person, which is the whole secret. It is the same four-part shape I use to brief my own AI agents: a role, the situation, the job, and the format.
Your first win . ten minutes
Rewrite your next prompt today.
Do not start a new chat from scratch. Take the next thing you were going to ask AI and brief it properly.
- Write your normal one-line request first, the lazy version, so you can feel the difference.
- Now add the four lines above it: who you are, what is going on, exactly what you want, and how it should look. One sentence each is plenty.
- Send the full version and compare. Keep the four-line shape somewhere you can paste it, and you never write a lazy prompt again.
Do this three times and it stops being a checklist. It becomes how you talk to AI.
Want to get good at talking to AI?
I run two companies with AI agents and post the real prompts and workflows daily, in plain English. Steal the ones that fit your work.
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