Quick check
Guess first, no penalty. You paste a long email into the AI with your instructions mixed into it. What can go wrong?
A prompt is the message you send to an AI. When you paste an email, policy or transcript, keep the pasted material apart from your instructions. Put your instructions first, then a line of --- or a block of triple quotes, then the material.
This makes the model less likely to treat the pasted text as new instructions. It also lets you swap the material next week without rewriting the prompt.
A full prompt with pasted material
Summarizing a 3-page policy for new hires:
Task: Summarize our new hire policy for people in their first week.
Context: The reader is a new support agent at a mid-size retail company. They
are in week one and do not know our HR terms. I need this so they understand the
rules on working hours, leave, expenses and probation without reading all three
pages.
Format: 300 words or less. Short sections with bold headings. Plain English, no
HR jargon. End with a checklist of the five things they must do in week one.
Avoid: legal wording, quoting long passages, and anything on IT setup, which is
in a separate document.
Source material:
---
[paste the 3-page policy here]
---Fill the gaps
Fill the gaps.
Prompt
Task: . --- [paste the email here] ---
Your turn. Fill every line, or delete the ones you don't need:
Task: [verb] + [what you want]
Context: The reader is [who]. I need this because [reason]. Background: [facts]. Constraints: [deadlines, limits, rules]
Format: [length] + [structure] + [tone]
Avoid: [what the answer must not do]
Source material:
---
[paste the document, email or data here]
---Try it
Your steps, about 2 minutes
- 1.Write a full prompt for a real task, with the material after a --- line. Save it in a document you keep, and reuse it next time the task comes back.2 min