What gets lost when you paste a prompt?

'10 "FORBIDDEN" CHATGPT PROMPTS MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT'

'Here are 9 ChatGPT prompts to save you hours every day'

You've probably seen a lot of posts these lately. And some of them provide comprehensive prompts that the creator has clearly put a lot of thought into.

But that's the issue. They have done the thinking, not you. Copying and pasting the prompt is an easy first step to surrendering your thinking.

Always start with human intent

Every interaction with AI should start with a clear human intent, your intent. If you use someone else's then you're starting off with something that hasn't been intentionally crafted to take into account your situation and your objectives.

You will likely get a response that sounds plausible and considered. But this is one of the greatest risks in using AI, that its fluency can be mistaken for understanding.

And if you haven't set the intent right at the start, it will be difficult for you to see past the fluency and analyse if the response fits your needs.

So one of three things will happen. You might just reject the response and move on. No major harm done other than a little time wasted, and the opportunity to solve the problem you thought the prompt would help with passed by.

You might accept the response, and end up with a sub-optimal piece of content, or solution to your problem.

Or you might work hard with human intervention to clarify and adapt the response to your purpose. But you'll spend more time doing this than if you'd got the prompt right in the first case.

Prompting with intent

When you create a prompt, you may need to get clear on your intent. At a minimum, you need to consider what you are trying to achieve, what context is important and what success looks like.

If you are using someone else's prompt, you need to think more, not less. You need to consider all the questions you would if making the prompt yourself, and then see how well the prompt answers them. You also need to work out what the creator was trying to achieve, and what assumptions they were making.

The trick is to use the prompt as inspiration, instead of treating it as a quick solution.

But I don't know where to start

If you've got a prompt that you're excited to use, the best thing you can do is to work through the steps and consider what it is trying to achieve and what assumptions the creator made. And then use this to rebuild the prompt for your own situation.

But if you're struggling to get started, help is at hand. You can try Formidably AI's Prompt Intentionaliser. When you paste in the prompt you'd like to use, it will guide you through a conversation to build the right human intent for your own prompt. You can find it here.

Let us know how you get on

We'd love to hear your stories about the prompts you've found, how you've adapted them to your own use, and if the Prompt Intentionaliser worked for you. See our contact us page to get in touch.