Write better prompts for a desktop AI assistant

Why desktop prompting is different

In a chat session you build context over many turns. At a desktop assistant you ask one thing, get an answer and go back to work. There is no time to negotiate, and elaborate prompt scaffolding costs more than it returns.

So the goal is not a longer prompt. It is a prompt that specifies the few things a model cannot infer from what you attached.

Three things worth specifying

1. The audience

*Explain this error* and *explain this error to someone who has never seen this codebase* produce very different answers, and the second is almost always the one you wanted. Audience is the highest-value word count in any prompt.

2. The format

*Three bullets*, *a table with these columns*, *under 100 words*, *a numbered checklist*. This shortens the answer, speeds it up, and forces the model to prioritise. Unbounded prompts produce unbounded answers.

3. The lens

What you want the model looking for. *Review this specification for ambiguity that would let two developers build different things* is a lens. *Review this specification* is not, and it will produce a summary with some compliments attached.

What to leave out

• Roleplay preamble. *You are a world-class expert* adds tokens and rarely changes anything. If you want a specific perspective, name the lens instead.
• Politeness padding. It costs tokens and does nothing for the answer.
• Repeating what is attached. The model has the document. Describing it again wastes context.
• Multi-part questions. Two questions in one prompt produce an answer that half-serves both. Ask, then follow up.
• A system prompt doing work the request should do. The system prompt sets standing behaviour, not the requirements of this specific task.

When the answer misses

The instinct is to reply *no, I meant...* That works, but it costs a round trip and drags the wrong answer along in the context of everything that follows.

1. Ask what your question left outNearly always the answer missed because a constraint was in your head and not in the prompt.
2. Edit the original message and resendLater messages in that branch are replaced after confirmation. You get a clean thread and a better answer, for one request instead of three.
3. Escalate only if that failsIf a well-specified question still gets a shallow answer, that is when a more capable model or higher reasoning is the right move.

Editing rather than arguing is the highest-leverage habit on this page. It is faster, cheaper, and it keeps threads short enough to stay inside the context budget.

Turn good prompts into shortcuts

When you notice yourself typing the same instruction for the third time, make it a custom selected-text action. The instruction is stored, {{selection}} marks where the text goes, and it becomes a keystroke.

This is where prompt craft compounds. A prompt you refined once and now trigger with one key is worth far more than a clever prompt you retype from memory each time, badly.

Use the system prompt for standing preferences

The system prompt is sent with every normal request and is editable in Settings. It is the right place for things that are true of every answer you want, and the wrong place for anything task-specific.

Good candidates: a default brevity preference, a note that you prefer being told when something is uncertain rather than given a confident guess, or a house style. Bad candidates: instructions about the document you happen to be working on today.