Words to Prompt AI Well With
How to Prompt AI for Better Answers: A Beginner-Friendly Guide to Asking Questions That Get Better Results
Free editions
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Audio edition
The whole book, read aloud. 12 parts · 2 hours 58 minutes total.
- DownloadIntroduction2:03
- DownloadHow This Book Got Learned10:42
- DownloadPart One — Sharpen22:20
- DownloadPart Two — Constrain21:44
- DownloadPart Three — Structure22:09
- DownloadPart Four — Challenge22:29
- DownloadPart Five — Verify22:55
- DownloadPart Six — Create22:54
- DownloadRecipes and Prompt Templates17:33
- DownloadThe Practice Room and Field Guide8:01
- DownloadQuick Reference4:32
- DownloadA Word at the End1:02
About the book
You don't need longer prompts. You need stronger words.
Most answers from AI disappoint for a simple reason: the question was a topic, not an assignment. “Tell me about mortgages” earns an encyclopedia entry — average in every direction, useful in none. A single well-chosen word — rank, exclude, audit, steelman — tells the machine what to do, and the answer sharpens on the spot.
Words to Prompt AI Well With collects seventy-two of those words in six groups: sharpen, constrain, structure, challenge, verify, create. Every entry teaches by doing. You see a prompt the way a beginner types it, then the same prompt with the word in it, then a plain note on why it worked — plus a second example from another corner of life, a short warning about how the word itself can go wrong, and one sentence that places it perfectly.
Between the introduction and the words sits a short true story: how this vocabulary was learned in real work, one misunderstanding at a time, between the author and the AI assistant he works with every day.
No code, no jargon, nothing to memorize. Pick the six words that match the way your own questions usually fail, use them until they feel like typing, then come back for six more.
Inside the book
- Part One — SharpenSpecify · Quantify · Itemize · Compare · Rank · Prioritize · Exemplify · Define · Pinpoint · Probe · Anchor · Target
- Part Two — ConstrainConstrain · Exclude · Assume · Bracket · Budget · Limit · Simplify · Localize · Timebox · Role · Filter · Scope
- Part Three — StructureSequence · Outline · Tabulate · Summarize · Compress · Expand · Decompose · Recompose · Stage · Chunk · Layer · Map
- Part Four — ChallengeSteelman · Invert · Critique · Defend · Disagree · Counterfactual · Anticipate · Simulate · Stress-Test · Falsify · Worst-Case · Rebut
- Part Five — VerifyVerify · Audit · Cite · Cross-Check · Trace · Estimate · Flag · Reconcile · Sanity-Check · Grade · Refresh · Benchmark
- Part Six — CreateDraft · Invent · Narrate · Translate · Rewrite · Vary · Iterate · Formalize · Brainstorm · Voice · Combine · Script
- Closing chaptersRecipes · Prompt Templates — Ready to Copy · The Practice Room · Field Guide · Quick Reference · A Word at the End
The art
The original painting, by Douglas John Brownfield.
Every picture in this book grows from a single painting: an abstract work in ink on canvas by the artist, red and gold and weather. It appears exactly once in these pages, as a full plate before the story chapter, entirely itself — no crop, no treatment, no improvement.
Everything else you see — the cover, the part openers, the chapter pieces — is a variation on that one painting, made with AI tools working from the original under direction. Some stay close, nearly quotations. Some travel far, until the washes become weather over hills or a sky full of ordered cards. All began in the same place.
That seemed only honest. This is a book about directing a machine with words — precisely chosen, honestly bounded, checked afterward. The pictures were made the same way the text teaches: one strong source, carefully worded instructions, and a human deciding what is finished.
About the author
Douglas B. is an independent builder and artist based in Illinois. He builds self-custodial software tools — programs designed so the people who use them keep hold of their own work — and he writes about what it is actually like to work with AI day after day: where it shines, where it guesses, and where it has to be watched.
His abstract paintings, ink on canvas, take their cues from Hubble photographs of galaxies and nebulae, all wash and weather and deep space. One of them carries the art of this book.
Words to Prompt AI Well With grew out of a real working partnership between the author and an AI assistant, one project at a time. Every word in it was bought the way tools usually are: a job went badly without it, and the lesson stayed.