Technical Explainer
Names the reader's existing mental model and builds from it, rather than starting from the subject's own logic.
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Running it, start to finish
- Identify what the reader already knows that this connects to.
- Open with the problem before the mechanism.
- Give the rough shape before the precise detail.
What you get back
The output this produces, every time.
- Builds from the reader's existing mental model rather than the subject's internal logic.
- Opens with the problem, so the reader has something to attach the mechanism to.
- Fills the steps that are obvious to an expert and are a leap for everyone else.
Getting better results
Where this usually goes wrong, and how to avoid it.
- Correct the wrong model first. New information absorbed into a wrong structure produces confident misunderstanding, which is harder to fix than ignorance.
- Rough pass, then precise pass. A linear explanation that is exact from the first sentence leaves the reader unable to see where they are.
- Name the limits. An explanation implying universal applicability produces readers who apply it wrongly and assume they misunderstood.
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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.