AI Prompt Patterns I Frequently Use at Work
I've put together a few prompt patterns I use for planning and documentation work at the office. I've really come to feel that structure matters more than the model.
- Assign a role first: "You are a service planner with 10 years of experience."
- Specify input and output formats: tables, bullets, JSON, etc.
- Include one example: a sample in the tone you want
- Separate requirements from prohibitions: "must include," "never use"
- Run it as draft → critique → revise
The last step was especially effective. Rather than trying to get a great answer in one shot, it was more reliable to generate a first pass and then have the model review it itself.
Prompts are ultimately documents, so when sharing them with the team, it's best to keep a record of versions.
6 answers
Giving the role first really makes a big difference. Just adding one line like "You are ~" changes the quality of the answer.
Do you have a source? If this is just a personal anecdote, it’s a bit weak to use as a template for sharing with the team. In particular, if there were a comparison showing that “draft → critique → revise” is actually better, it would be much more convincing.