A lot of prompting advice is out of date. Tricks that helped a couple of years ago, like telling the AI to “think step by step” or spelling out every instruction, don’t do much with the newer models. Some of them get in the way.

What works now is closer to briefing a good contractor. Here’s what I’ve changed in my own prompts.

Say what done looks like

I used to give the AI the steps. Read my notes, find the main points, write the update. Newer models are good at working out the steps themselves, often better than I would.

What they can’t guess is what you want at the end. So that’s where I spend my words now. How long should it be? Who’s it for? What should the reader do next?

Here’s a before and after for a client update.

Before: “Think really hard about this. Step 1: read my notes. Step 2: find the main points. Step 3: write a client update. Make it not generic.”

After: “Write a client update from my notes. Done looks like: under 150 words, one clear next step, sounds like the five updates I’ve pasted below. No bullet points.”

The second one is shorter and gets a much better result.

Name what you don’t want

“Make it not generic” doesn’t help, because the AI doesn’t know what generic means to you. Be specific. “No ‘I hope this finds you well’. No bullet points. Don’t mention price.” The AI can follow a list of specific don’ts. It can’t follow a vibe.

Show examples instead of describing them

This one surprised me the most. I used to write long descriptions of my voice: friendly but professional, warm, direct, and so on. Pasting in three or four real emails I’m happy with works better than all of that. The AI matches what it sees far more reliably than what it’s told.

Same goes for anything with a standard. Want proposals that look like your best one? Paste your best one in.

Paste the screenshot

If the information is in a chart, a table or on a screen, don’t retype it. Take a screenshot and paste it in. Newer models read charts and tables properly, and you skip the typos.

Stop asking it to try harder

“Think hard”, “be thorough” and “this is really important” used to nudge the AI into more effort. Most newer models decide how much thinking a task needs on their own, so those lines mostly add noise. If the answer isn’t good enough, give it better information. Pleading doesn’t help.

Save the prompts that work

When a prompt works, save it with the examples you used. Next time you need a client update, you’re starting from something that already works. Over time you build a small set of briefs for the jobs you do every week, and that’s most of what makes AI feel useful in a business.

If you’d like help building those briefs around your real work, set up your own AI Operating System is the starting point. Work with Brightwaters covers what it looks like when we do it with you.