Use prompt moves that transfer

First, orient the model with the real audience and decision. Second, ground it in supplied sources. Third, constrain scope, format, and forbidden actions. Fourth, inspect by asking for assumptions, unsupported claims, or tests. Applied to this topic, those moves support create a seven-minute decision deck for a six-week customer-support pilot, not vague content generation.

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.

The likely useful output is: A title-only story that moves from current support delay to bounded pilot, measurement plan, risk controls, and a final staffing decision. Follow with a critic pass, not a request to “improve it”:

Audit the draft against the original contract. Return a table:
criterion | pass/fail | exact evidence | smallest correction.
Do not introduce new facts. List unresolved questions separately.

This second prompt changes the mode from creation to inspection. For alternatives, request deliberately different options and specify the axis of difference. For revision, name one defect and freeze everything else. For extraction, require a schema and define unknown/null behavior. For decisions, ask for criteria, evidence, assumptions, and sensitivity—not hidden private reasoning.

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.

Do not confuse fluent explanations with evidence. 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. The prompt is successful only when the resulting artifact survives an external check.

Watch for decorating before structuring; invented metrics; slide titles that name topics rather than conclusions; overcrowded notes; unlabeled generated imagery. If the answer is too broad, shrink the deliverable. If it invents, tighten “use only” boundaries and require source labels. If formatting drifts, provide a short valid example and validate mechanically. If every option sounds alike, define meaningful axes. If revision damages good sections, quote the exact passage to preserve.

Keep prompt versions with short notes: what changed, why, and what happened. That creates transferable knowledge. Copying a “perfect prompt” without its data, risk level, and reviewer rarely does.