# Practice - add specificity

Web page: https://academy.memberpress.ai/courses/prompt-engineering-101/l5/

Lesson 5 of 19 in [Prompt Engineering 101](https://academy.memberpress.ai/courses/prompt-engineering-101/), 5 min.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjAFMLvhb-g

The prompts in this practice session are the kind you encounter in real work. They are not obviously bad. They just lack the specificity that would make them produce something immediately usable.

**The three-question test**

Before you rewrite any of these prompts, run them through three questions:

Who is the reader? (Not "customers" — a specific type of customer at a specific point in their decision process.)

What format produces the most value? (A product description that lives on a landing page is different from one that goes in a catalog that goes to retailers.)

What constraints would make the output immediately usable? (Word count, tone, banned phrases, required inclusions.)

Answer all three questions in plain language. Then put those answers into the prompt.

**Worked example**

Before: "Write a product description for our new coffee maker."

The author knows this is a high-end pour-over coffee maker for specialty coffee enthusiasts. It costs $299. The description goes on a product page. The competition is described in terms of precision and ritual. The reader has already decided they want a premium coffee maker and is choosing between three.

None of that is in the prompt. Claude has to guess.

After: "Write a 120-word product description for a $299 pour-over coffee maker aimed at specialty coffee enthusiasts who are comparing premium options. The description goes on a product page. Emphasize precision and ritual. Do not use the words 'simple,' 'easy,' or 'convenient.' End with a single sentence about the experience of using it."

Run both versions. The after version will produce something close to usable. The before version will produce something generic.

**Your turn**

Prompt 1: "Summarize the quarterly report."

What does the summary need to cover? Who reads it and what decisions do they make with it? What format — bullets, memo, one paragraph? How long?

Prompt 2: "Draft a message to the team about the new policy."

What policy? What does the team need to understand or do? What tone — direct, reassuring, explanatory? What should the message not say?

**If you get stuck**

If you do not know enough about the task to add specificity, that is useful information. It means the prompt is not ready to be written yet — you need to gather the context first. Real prompts fail for the same reason: the person writing them does not yet know what they need.

**Deliverable**

Rewrite both prompts with full specificity. For each, run the before and after version. The after version should produce something you could use without editing.

## Try these prompts

- Write a product description for our new coffee maker.
- Summarize the quarterly report.
- Draft a message to the team about the new policy.

Next: [Assigning roles](https://academy.memberpress.ai/courses/prompt-engineering-101/l6/)