I finally caught why my AI prompts were giving me garbage results

For like six months I kept asking my AI tools to write simple emails and summaries but they always came back super wordy or totally off track. I figured the AI was just bad or I needed a fancier subscription. Then last Tuesday I watched a coworker in the break room type out a prompt that was three sentences long with bullet points and it worked perfectly. That's when it hit me I was throwing these huge rambling paragraphs at the AI thinking more detail would help but really I was confusing it. Now I break my requests into tiny clear steps like "write a 3 sentence intro then list 5 features" and the results are way better. Has anyone else tried really short structured prompts and seen a big difference?

4 comments

4 Comments

cora_martinez2mo ago

My sister actually had the exact same experience you did. She spent months writing these long detailed prompts and getting nonsense back until she tried a simple two line prompt with numbered steps. It worked perfectly the first time. I think the shorter prompts just make it easier for the AI to focus on what you actually want.

emmasingh2mo ago

oh definitely not that serious lol @cora_martinez people act like prompt engineering is some kind of sacred art form when really you just need to be clear and direct. i spent like an hour writing a novel for an AI once to plan a birthday party and it suggested hiring a clowngoat hybrid. the two line prompt i did after that? cake, balloons, done. i think people just overthink it because they want to feel smart but the AI literally doesnt care how fancy your words are. its just math in a trenchcoat at the end of the day.

richard_ramirez13d ago

Man my buddy tried that same thing. Wrote a whole paragraph for a recipe and the AI told him to boil his phone. Two words after that got him actual instructions.

victor_carr5413d ago

My buddy Mike spent two weeks trying to get an AI to write a customer complaint email for him. Every time he sent it back it came out like a legal document from a angry robot. @cora_martinez your sister is spot on with the numbered steps thing because Mike finally just wrote "say the product broke, ask for a refund, be polite" and it nailed it first try.