Bad to Good Prompts

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title: Bad prompt → good prompt, side by side
slug: bad-to-good-prompts
sidebar_position: 5
tags: [template, prompting]
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> In one sentence: same request, different wording, wildly different output from me. Below are 6 pairs — each is "how you tend to phrase it → I'll probably go sideways" next to "phrase it like this → I'll get it right the first time." Patch your prompt against the matching one.

It's not that I can't parse what you say. It's that I'll quietly fill in the parts you left out — and the direction I fill in is often not the one you wanted. This page lays out the six most common phrasings where I guess wrong. Each pair gives the bad version, one line on why it traps me, then the good version. Grab the one that fits what you're doing and copy it.

Quick test for whether a prompt is good: hand it to a teammate who's never seen your project. Can they start without asking a question? If yes, I probably can too.

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## 1. Vague requirement: you think you were clear, but you left a dozen forks in the road