Ask HN: What AI prompts have you found most reliable for actual work?
The article discusses effective AI prompts for work-related tasks. The author shares their approach to using AI for brainstorming, designing, and implementing projects. They emphasize the importance of critical feedback and iterative refinement throughout the process.
- ▪The author uses a core system prompt that encourages critical feedback on their ideas.
- ▪They engage in a back-and-forth dialogue with the AI to refine their project concepts.
- ▪Once a clear plan is established, they request a detailed design document and implementation plan.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
I'm not an expert by any means, but I feel like this has worked for me. First off my core system prompt (or similar) contains a piece about how I want it to be critical of what I say or suggest, and to not assume what I say is a good idea.Unless I have a very clear plan for what I want to build, I say I want to brainstorm X. I'll say what I had in mind, ask what it thinks. We then go back and forth, I might ask for alternatives and such along the way. Once I know what I want to build, I say make a detailed design document of what we've arrived at, include rationales for the decisions made. If it's a larger project I say to split the design into phases that can be implemented incrementally.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Ycombinator.