Prompting
The quality of what you get out of AI is almost entirely determined by what you put in. This isn't about learning tricks — it's about giving the AI enough to work with.
The core idea
Think of AI like a brilliant new hire on their first day. They're smart, they work fast, they can handle almost anything — but they know nothing about you, your business, your clients, or what "good" looks like for your team.
If you give them vague instructions, you get vague work. If you give them context, examples, and a clear brief, you get something useful.
Prompting is just briefing.
The four elements
Every good prompt has some combination of these four things:
Role — who you are and what context matters
"I'm a founder of a food brand, writing to a wholesale buyer I've met once."
Context — the situation, the background, what already exists
"We've been in conversation for three weeks. They liked our samples but haven't committed. Here's the email chain: [paste]"
Task — what you actually want the AI to do
"Write a follow-up email that moves things forward without being pushy."
Format — how you want the output
"Short — 4–5 sentences. Conversational, not corporate. End with a clear next step."
Before and after
Without the four elements:
"Write a follow-up email to a buyer."
You'll get something generic. Probably fine. Definitely not yours.
With the four elements:
"I'm a founder at a sustainable food brand. I've been in conversation with a buyer at Waitrose for three weeks — they tried our samples last month and liked them but haven't committed. I want to follow up without being pushy. Write a short email (4–5 sentences) that's warm and direct, ends with a specific next step, and sounds like it's from a founder, not a corporate account manager."
You'll get something you can actually send.
The most important element: context
Of the four, context does the most work. The more the AI knows about your situation, the better it can help.
This is why setting up Claude CoWork properly matters so much — instead of re-explaining your business, your clients, and your tone on every prompt, that context is already loaded. You just describe the task.
Common mistakes
Too short. Most people write a sentence when they need a paragraph. More detail = better output.
No format instructions. If you don't say how long or what structure, you'll get whatever the AI defaults to. That's rarely what you wanted.
Accepting the first output. The first draft is a starting point. Tell it what to change: "Make it shorter", "Less formal", "Add a specific example". Two or three rounds usually gets you somewhere good.
Copying and pasting without reading. AI makes things up. Always read the output before using it, especially anything with facts, figures, or names.
Practice exercise
Take something you do regularly — an email type, a report format, a type of message. Write a prompt for it using all four elements. Share it with the group and we'll improve it together.
Save your best prompts. Once you've got something that works, don't throw it away — store it somewhere you can reuse it. The CoWork setup section covers how to do this properly.