The prompt guide · Four steps

The four workflow steps, with the prompts to run them

Copy each prompt, swap the bracketed parts for your own context, and keep the ones that earn their place. Nothing here needs a new tool.

Download the workflow template (PDF)Back to the 5 signs

Prompt structure

One reusable scaffold instead of a fresh prompt every time.

Every good prompt names four things: who the model is, what it is looking at, what it must not do, and the exact shape of the answer. Write the scaffold once, then only the context line changes day to day.

The scaffold

Prompt

ROLE: You are my operations assistant at a 12-person veterinary practice.
CONTEXT: I will paste a client email below. Our tone is warm, plain, never salesy.
CONSTRAINTS: Do not invent prices, dates, or medical advice. Flag anything you are unsure of as [CHECK].
OUTPUT: A ready-to-send reply, under 120 words, plus a one-line summary of what I promised.

EMAIL:
"""
<paste here>
"""

Teaching it your voice

Prompt

Here are three replies I wrote myself. Describe my tone in five rules I can reuse, then rewrite the draft above so it follows those rules.

1. <paste reply>
2. <paste reply>
3. <paste reply>

If output drifts, the missing piece is almost always OUTPUT format — be specific about length and structure.

Tool integration

The workflow lives inside the inbox, docs, and CRM you already run.

Pick the one place the work already happens and put the prompt there — a saved reply, a doc template, a CRM note field. No new stack, no extra login for the team to forget.

Inbox triage

Prompt

Sort the emails below into: needs a reply today / needs a reply this week / no reply needed.
For each in the first group, draft a reply using my saved scaffold.
Return a table: sender | intent | urgency | draft.

Doc to proposal

Prompt

Using our proposal template below, turn these discovery notes into a first draft.
Keep every template heading. Where the notes are thin, write [NEEDS INPUT] instead of guessing.

TEMPLATE:
<paste>

NOTES:
<paste>

Store the prompt where the work lives. A prompt in a separate app gets used twice and abandoned.

Automation result

Drafts, summaries, and follow-ups waiting before you open the thread.

Once a prompt is stable, put it on a trigger: a new email, a finished meeting, a stalled deal. The output is always a draft for a human to approve — never an auto-send.

Meeting to actions

Prompt

From this transcript, produce:
1. Five bullet summary.
2. A table of actions: owner | action | due date.
3. Any decision that was made but has no owner, listed under RISKS.
Use only what is in the transcript.

TRANSCRIPT:
<paste>

Follow-up sequence

Prompt

Write a three-touch follow-up sequence for a lead who went quiet after our proposal.
Touch 1: day 3, helpful, no ask. Touch 2: day 8, one specific question. Touch 3: day 15, polite close-out.
Under 90 words each, our warm plain tone, no urgency tricks.

Keep a human approval step on anything a client will read. Approval is what makes automation safe to scale.

Scaling strategy

One template per recurring task, reviewed monthly, shared across the team.

Growth comes from coverage, not cleverness. List the tasks that repeat weekly, give each one template, and review the set once a month: what got used, what got edited heavily, what should be retired.

Find the next task to automate

Prompt

Here is a list of tasks my team repeats each week, with rough hours.
Rank them for AI suitability using: how repetitive, how much judgement, how sensitive the data.
Return a table with a recommended first step for the top three, and say which ones we should NOT automate and why.

TASKS:
<paste>

Monthly review

Prompt

These are last month's saved prompts and how often each was used.
Tell me which to keep as-is, which to rewrite, and which to retire.
For each rewrite, give the improved version.

<paste usage list>

Track edit-weight, not just usage. A template you rewrite every time is a template that needs fixing.

Want these four steps fitted to your own week?

Download the four-step template — prompts and integration tips included — then take a free 30-minute discovery call to adapt it to your business.

Download the template (PDF)Book a discovery call