Start with the job to be done

The working assignment is to create a seven-minute decision deck for a six-week customer-support pilot for department leaders with little technical background. That sentence is narrower than “use AI for presentations.” It identifies a deliverable and a reviewer. Write a definition of done with three layers: the output must satisfy the audience's need; factual or functional claims must be traceable; and a named person must own the final decision. A deck is a guided argument, not prose divided into rectangles. If the titles alone do not tell the story, visual polish will not rescue it.

Start by separating tasks. The model may draft, classify, transform, compare, or suggest. It may not silently approve, publish, grade, deploy, cite, or consent on someone's behalf. For this assignment the authoritative material is decision requested, audience concerns, verified evidence, time limit, slide count, brand constraints, and likely objections. Anything absent from those inputs is either an explicit assumption or an unanswered question.

Use this prompt as a realistic starting contract:

Create a six-slide outline for leaders deciding whether to assign two staff to a six-week support pilot. Use only my evidence. Each title must be a complete takeaway sentence; add 2–3 support bullets, a suggested visual, and speaker notes under 40 words. Mark missing evidence; never invent metrics or quotes.

Notice what the prompt does: it states the setting, limits the output, names forbidden behavior, and requests evidence that can be reviewed. It does not ask the model to “make it amazing.” If a constraint matters, make it testable. Replace “be accurate” with a source boundary, formula check, test command, rights ledger, or approval step.

A useful response would look like this: A title-only story that moves from current support delay to bounded pilot, measurement plan, risk controls, and a final staffing decision. That description is intentionally observable. “Looks good” is not acceptance. The operator must read titles alone for logical flow, trace every number to a source, inspect chart axes, rehearse to seven minutes, and test contrast, font size, and alt text. Keep the source material beside the draft so review means comparison, not memory.

Run the work through brief → spine → evidence → design → rehearse → decide. Stop when an authoritative input is missing, a high-risk claim lacks evidence, private material cannot be safely removed, or the proposed action exceeds the permission granted. Escalation is successful workflow behavior, not model failure.

Common framing mistakes are decorating before structuring; invented metrics; slide titles that name topics rather than conclusions; overcrowded notes; unlabeled generated imagery. Prevent them by writing a one-paragraph job card: user, decision, deliverable, source of truth, constraints, reviewer, and stop condition. This card becomes the anchor for every later prompt.