Generative AI Prompts

Note: These prompts are best used with Anthropic's Claude, which I use more often than ChatGPT because it has a longer context window and much lower tendency to hallucinate when dealind with large inputs. Since I primarily use generative AI as a learning & building tool, I optimize these prompts for maximum context and accuracy.



Book Summary, optimized for self-help and advice:


I have uploaded [XY Author]’s [XY Text]. I need an extracted summary from you containing all actionable advice/knowledge within this text. I will never read the source text, but I want to enjoy 100% of the academic, social, and experiential benefits the text confers. The following are tags for PS = Paraphrased Summary by LLM DQ = Direct Quotes, VERBATIM excerpts WITH PAGE NUMBER CS/IE = Case Study or Illustrative Example: a story or narrative the text provides which is intended to evidence a certain argument or point therein. These should typically be paraphrased and marked with a page number for further investigation, but occasionally there are CS/IEs which can be entirely contained in a DQ of a few sentences. In these cases DQ is preferable.


Your summary should have the following 4-part structure:

  • Five-paragraph overall summary (PS)
    • 1 paragraph: intro + roadmap, structure of the text and arguments
    • 3 paragraphs: three major movements from the work demonstrating its segues between major arguments, & important subpoints in each argument
    • conclusion, distilled review of overall argument
  • Ten central case studies (CS/IE)s. (PS)
    • Include less than five sentences per CS/IE explaining its structure/narrative, showing context in the work, and highlight whether it’s referenced multiple times.
    • Connect CS/IEs to actionable advice by subpoint if possible
  • Ten bottom-line pieces of concise, actionable advice (DQ preffered, PS ok)
    • whether through author’s direct recommendation or implicit illustration e.g. “successful/unsuccessful examples have typically included THIS course of action: …”
    • Include sub-bullet CS/IE here WHENEVER available

  • Ten of the book’s best quotes (DQ), selected on the criteria:
    • communicates a central point of the text concisely
    • is dramatic, well-written and/or memorable
    • illustrates author’s unique perspective/experience well

A few final ABSOLUTE RULES:

  1. CLEARLY mark what is (DQ), (PS) and (CS/IE[either DQ or PS]) for all bullet points of the summary so as to make resource source-rich & properly attributable in the end.
  2. If uncertain about any part of the reduction/summarization process, ask me about specific implementations instead of assuming any particular behavior. This includes what content/themes/chapters to focus the summary on.
  3. Points which are already too nuanced/concise to be effectively summarized should be marked with page numbers so that I can peruse the book.
  4. After you complete this first response, give a few options for drilldown prompts which would allow me to further investigate the depth of the text using your (the LLM’s) help.