Productivity
Beginner
16 min
From vague to specific — five rewrites that fix 80% of bad prompts
The problem
The output is not wrong exactly — it is just not useful. So you try again with slightly different words. And again.
The workflow
1Read the output
2Name the failure
3Find the missing part
4Add one thing
5Re-run
6Compare
★Save the winner
What you need
Original prompt: How should I price my SaaS product? Output received: 'Pricing depends on many factors including your target market, value proposition, competitor pricing, and cost structure.
The tool
Your default assistant
The prompt
Subscribers. The full prompt is part of the SMEMinds AI Playbook. See plans.
What comes back
Diagnosis: Failure 1 (generic) plus Failure 5 (hedged). Information I did not have: What does the product do?
Verify before you use it
Human review required. Check every line below before this leaves your screen.
- The diagnosis is a list of questions, not answers. You still have to supply the competitor prices and the cost to serve — the model cannot look them up for your specific case.
- Check that the 'guesses' list is complete. Read the original output again and mark anything else that was assumed.
- When you re-run with the answers, verify the recommendation is genuinely committed rather than hedged in new words.
- The strongest-argument-against section is the one worth reading twice. If it is weak, the recommendation is overconfident.