The "cut it by a third" editing prompt
An editing prompt that shortens your writing without sanding your voice off. It cuts, it does not rewrite, and it shows you what it removed.
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Prompts That Work
A library of prompts that actually deliver. Copy, paste, ship.
11 prompts
The de-hype prompt for spec sheets and launch posts
Paste in a product page or press release and get back what is actually verifiable, what is weasel-worded, and what the page is carefully not telling you.
The "does this actually affect me" triage prompt
Feed it your setup once and any changelog, launch post, or paper after that. It answers the only question that matters: what in here changes anything for me.
The "write the failing test first" debugging prompt
Make the model reproduce the bug before it touches the fix. Kills the confident patch that solves a problem you don't have.
The "interview me first" prompt
Stop writing three paragraphs of context nobody asked for. This prompt makes the model interview you before it starts, and the first draft comes back needing one revision instead of four.
The parametric part prompt for OpenSCAD
Describe a functional part with real measurements and get back OpenSCAD with every dimension as a named variable, a clearance knob, and FDM rules baked in.
The print failure triage prompt
A structured troubleshooting prompt that turns a failed print into ranked hypotheses and one-variable tests, instead of the generic 'check your bed leveling' checklist.
The prompt that fixes your other prompts
Paste in a prompt you rely on and get back its ambiguities, its unenforceable instructions, and a tighter rewrite, plus test inputs to prove the rewrite is actually better.
A JSON extraction prompt small local models can actually follow
Getting clean structured output from a 7B or 8B model is mostly about the example object, not the rules. This is the pattern that stopped my local extraction jobs from breaking.
The "strongest case against" prompt
Models agree with you by default. This prompt forces the argument a smart skeptic would make against your plan, plus the assumptions that have to hold for it to work anyway.
The "explain before you touch it" refactor prompt
The single highest-leverage prompt I use. It forces the model to understand code before changing it, which kills the confident-but-wrong rewrites that waste your afternoon.