Reading Prompt Clarify First.en
---
id: reading-prompt-clarify-first
locale: en
title: When the model should ask questions first
description: Learn when clarification is safer than confident guessing.
learningStage: prompt
learningOrder: 14
contentKind: reading
difficulty: medium
---
## Clarifying is not stalling
If any of these are missing, asking first is usually better than generating immediately:
- **The audience is unclear**
- **Success criteria are unclear**
- **Risk boundaries are unclear**
## Especially important for
- High-risk tasks: contracts, pricing, medical or legal wording
- High-rework tasks: long edits, code changes, bulk transformations
## What good clarification looks like
- Ask only 2 to 4 questions
- Make every question output-relevant
- Ask enough to proceed, not enough to create an interview
## Why it matters
Once you know when to clarify, the next step is learning when the model should stop chatting and start using tools.when to use it
Community prompt sourced from the open-source GitHub repo erweixin/prompt-challenges (no explicit license). A "Reading Prompt Clarify First.en" style prompt — adapt the placeholders and specifics to your task. Imported as-is and not independently retested here, so check the output before relying on it.
tags
roleplaycommunitygeneral
source
erweixin/prompt-challenges · no explicit license