digest
Short Summary
Main recommendation: Add the line "Ask me three to five clarifying questions so you are 99% certain of what I want you to do" to the end of almost every AI prompt, whether in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or another tool. The AI then pauses to ask targeted questions before generating output, which the speaker shows produces a closer match to the intended result than a single long prompt.
Key Points
- The speaker demonstrates the difference with the same lawn illustration prompt in Gemini: the first attempt, without the line, produced an image that did not match the intended before-and-after comparison.
- In a new chat with the added line, the AI stopped and asked clarifying questions instead of generating the image immediately.
- Answers to the questions can be short, such as two or three words, rather than full sentences.
- The questions can surface details the user had not considered or had assumed, which then guide the final output.
- The speaker's second, improved image better matched the before-and-after style, with greater focus on the lawns and landscaping.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: Add this exact sentence to the end of your prompt: "Ask me three to five clarifying questions so you are 99% certain of what I want you to do." Review the questions and reply briefly. In the demonstration, the speaker answered "before and after" for comparison style, "modern" for art style, "focus on the lawn" for context, "bright and sunny" for mood and time of day, and "no text or words at all" for extra elements, noting that AI often adds unwanted text to images. The speaker suggests saving the line in a text expansion tool for quick insertion.
- The speaker says the method was tested a few times and that the AI did stop to ask questions in the demonstration, though it may not always do so.
- The example was a marketing image for a hypothetical landscaping service, comparing a messy lawn with a well-kept one.
- The speaker notes you do not need to answer all five questions.
Bottom Line
Ending prompts with a request for clarifying questions is a quick way to get the AI to surface missing details, so you spend less time writing long prompts and more time reaching a usable result.
