ChatGPT gave you waffle. Claude gave you the wrong format. Perplexity hallucinated half the facts. The problem isn’t the AI. It’s your prompt.
Common Symptoms of a Bad Prompt
You’ll know your prompt is bad when you get:
Generic answers. The output could apply to anyone, anywhere. It’s bland, safe, and useless.
Wrong format. You wanted bullet points; you got paragraphs. You wanted a summary; you got an essay.
Unusable waffle. Vague platitudes, corporate nonsense, or self-help language that says nothing.
Model guesses instead of understanding. The AI invents context, assumes intent, or fills gaps with generic filler.
The Hidden Mistakes
Most bad prompts share five mistakes:
1. Missing context. You didn’t tell the model what it needs to know. “Write a report” is meaningless without context. A report on what? For whom? In what format?
2. No constraints. You didn’t set boundaries. Without constraints—length, format, tone—the model defaults to its training data, which is mostly mediocre.
3. Asking two things at once. “Write a proposal and also suggest three follow-up emails.” The model will prioritise one and half-arse the other. Ask for one thing at a time.
4. Being too polite. “Could you maybe help me draft something?” Politeness wastes tokens. Be direct. “Draft a 200-word email declining a meeting request” is better.
5. Leaving out the output format. If you don’t specify the format, the model will guess. And it will probably guess wrong.
Why AI Can’t Read Your Mind
Humans interpret based on context, experience, and intuition. AI models interpret based on patterns in their training data. When you type “Write something good,” the model has no idea what “good” means to you.
The illusion of “smartness” comes from the model’s ability to produce fluent text. But fluency isn’t understanding. The model isn’t thinking—it’s predicting the next word based on patterns. If your input is vague, the patterns it matches will be vague too.
Rewriting Bad Prompts (Live Examples)
Example 1: Missing context
Bad: “Write a job description.”
Good: “Write a 300-word job description for a junior UX designer, emphasising collaboration and curiosity, aimed at recent graduates, using a friendly but professional tone.”
Example 2: No constraints
Bad: “Summarise this article.”
Good: “Summarise this article in three bullet points, each under 30 words, focusing on practical takeaways.”
Example 3: Asking two things at once
Bad: “Write a proposal for a new project and outline the budget.”
Good: “Write a 400-word proposal for a new content strategy project, emphasising ROI and timeline. I’ll ask for the budget separately.”
The 10-Second Fix
Before you hit send, ask yourself:
- Have I stated the goal?
- Have I described the audience?
- Have I set constraints?
If not, add them. It takes ten seconds and transforms your output.
PreStep Fixes These Mistakes Before You Type Anything
PreStep walks you through the process of clarifying your thinking before you write a prompt. Answer a few questions, get a clear brief, feed it to any AI. No more bad prompts. No more wasted time.