You typed a question. You got back something that sounded fine and was completely useless. Generic. Safe. The kind of answer that could've been written about anybody.
So you figured either the tool's overhyped, or you're doing it wrong.
You're doing it wrong. But not in the way you think, and it's one thing, not twenty.
You gave it a question when it needed a situation.
That's the whole problem. Everything below is just how to fix that.
The 4 things a good prompt has
Forget acronyms. Forget the 47-part mega-framework somebody sells you. There are 4 things, and most people include exactly one of them.
1. Who it is. Give it a role. "You're an accountant looking at this for the first time." Costs you 8 words, changes everything, because it stops answering as a helpful assistant and starts answering as somebody with a job.
2. What's actually going on. The context. This is the one everybody skips and it's the one that matters most. It does not know your business, what you do, or what you're trying to get done. It knows nothing until you tell it.
3. What you want back. A list? A table? An email I can send? 3 options? Say it. Otherwise you get 5 paragraphs when you wanted 5 bullets.
4. What NOT to do. The secret weapon nobody uses. "Don't give me generic advice." "Don't suggest anything that costs money." "Don't be nice about it." Every one of those kills an entire category of useless answer before it happens.
Watch it work
Here's the bad version. This is what most people type:
How do I get more customers?You already know what comes back. Post on social media, ask for referrals, run some ads. Advice you could've written yourself, for a business it knows nothing about.
Now the same question with the 4 things in it:
You're a marketing consultant who's blunt and hates fluff.
I run a 2-person business doing [what you do]. Most of my work
comes from word of mouth. I've got about [X] past customers.
I have maybe 3 hours a week for this and almost no budget.
I've tried [thing you tried] and it went nowhere.
Give me 3 things I could start this week, ranked by what would
work fastest. For each one tell me exactly what to do first.
Don't tell me to post on social media. Don't suggest anything
that costs money up front. Don't give me advice that assumes
I have a marketing person.Same question. Completely different answer, because now it's answering about your situation instead of about small business in general.
Rest of it's yours
Drop your email and the whole thing opens up right here. No waiting on a confirmation, no download, nothing to install.
You'll also get the new ones as I make them. Leave whenever, no hard feelings.
The 3 upgrades that matter more than any framework
1. Stop starting over
Biggest wasted move I see: people ask a question, get a mediocre answer, and open a brand new chat to try again.
Don't. Stay in the same conversation and push back like you would with a person:
That's too generic. Number 2 won't work because [reason].
Give me a version that accounts for that.It remembers everything you already told it in that chat. Every time you correct it, the next answer gets better. Start a new chat and you throw all of that away and begin from zero.
Your third answer is almost always the good one. Most people quit at the first.
2. Give it the real thing, don't describe the real thing
Do not summarize your spreadsheet for it. Paste the spreadsheet. Do not describe the email. Paste the email.
People shrink their own data down before handing it over, like they're being polite. All you're doing is removing the information it needed.
Here's my actual customer list. [paste the whole thing]
Which of these haven't bought from me in over a year?That works. "I have some customers who haven't bought in a while, what should I do" does not.
3. Ask it what it needs
This one feels weird the first time and it's the highest-value line in this whole guide:
Before you answer, what do you need to know about my situation
to give me a genuinely useful answer instead of a generic one?
Ask me the questions.It'll come back with 4 or 5 questions. Answer them. Then ask your original question.
The answer you get after that is a different species from the one you'd have gotten cold. And you didn't have to know what context to give it, because it told you.
When you want a straight answer, say so
Default behavior is agreeable. It'll tell you your idea is interesting and your pricing sounds reasonable. That's useless for anything that matters.
Be honest, not encouraging. Tell me what's wrong with this,
not what's good about it. If it's a bad idea say it's a bad
idea and tell me why.Then paste the thing.
Do this once on something you actually care about and you'll never go back. It's the difference between a tool that flatters you and one that's genuinely useful.
Write it down once instead of every time
If you find yourself pasting the same "here's my business" paragraph over and over, stop.
Write it once into a file Claude reads automatically, and every answer from then on already knows who you are. Takes 10 minutes and it's the highest-leverage hour in all of this. Here's how.
The whole guide in one line
Give it a situation, not a question. Then argue with the first answer.
That's it. That's the difference between people who say AI is overhyped and people quietly getting 3 hours of their week back.
Go take the worst answer you ever got out of it, and ask it again with the 4 things in it.