The prompt recipe

Asking an AI for something vague gets you something vague. "Write about cricket" produces bland, generic text.

If that feels familiar, it should. This is the Human Computer problem from Chapter 1 in a new costume. Leave out what you actually meant and you get something technically responsive and useless.

The difference: a computer stops when your instructions are incomplete. An AI fills the gaps with whatever is most average and hands it over confidently.

A prompt that works has four ingredients:

1. Context — who you are and what this is for
2. Goal — what you actually want
3. Constraints — length, tone, what to avoid
4. Output format — how it should be laid out

Most people write only the goal, then wonder why the answer doesn't fit. The other three are what make it usable.

The skill being practised here is the same one from Chapter 4: turning a vague human intention into something precise enough to act on.