The five parts
- Role — who the AI is being right now.
- Context — the real material it should reason over (your archive, not generic knowledge).
- Task — the specific output you want.
- Constraints — length, format, tone, what to avoid.
- Examples — one or two of 'good', so it has a target.
The habit
Iterate, don't restart. Steer the output with follow-ups instead of rewriting the prompt from scratch. Save the winners as templates.