All learning
Practical advice
Brief AI properly in five lines
A compact structure for giving an AI enough context to produce useful work without writing a page of instructions.
The practical answer
Start with this principle
A useful prompt tells the AI what job it is doing, why the work matters, who the result is for, what the result must contain and what good looks like.
Do this in order
Three steps you can use today
Name the job and outcome
Start with one clear task and the decision or action the answer should support. Avoid combining unrelated jobs in the same request.
Add the audience and context
Explain who will read the result and provide the few business facts the AI cannot know. Remove personal or confidential information first.
Set the shape and standard
Specify the length, format, tone and any required sections. Ask it to flag missing facts instead of filling gaps with guesses.
Copy and adapt
Five-line prompt structure
Job: Draft a reply to a new sales enquiry.
Context: We provide custom AI systems for UK businesses.
Audience: A non-technical operations director.
Output: Under 180 words with three clear next steps.
Standard: Plain English, no invented prices, and list any fact you still need.