Explain at Four Depths
Explains a concept at four increasing levels of depth, so you can find where your understanding actually stops rather than guessing.
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Running it, start to finish
- Name the concept and describe honestly where you get lost.
- Read all four depths in order, even the ones that feel too simple.
- Answer the check questions, then re-run on whatever blocked you.
What you get back
The output this produces, every time.
- Gives four self-contained explanations rather than one pitched at a guessed level.
- Bounds every analogy explicitly, which stops it becoming your next misconception.
- Provides a check question per depth so you can locate where your understanding actually stops.
Getting better results
Where this usually goes wrong, and how to avoid it.
- Fill in my-confusion specifically. 'I don't get recursion' is weak; 'I don't see how it returns' is strong and gets addressed directly.
- Answer the check questions before reading the answers. The point is to find the depth where you stop, and reading ahead removes exactly that information.
- Re-run at depth 3 and 4. for the sub-concepts you got stuck on. Understanding is usually blocked by one missing prerequisite, not by the target concept.
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Written for The AI University. Every prompt in this library is original work — authored, tested and revised here, not collected from elsewhere. 365 of them, free with an account.