Ask for one clear thing

Every assistant on this page is a large language model behind a chat box or an editor panel. The buttons differ; the thing that decides the quality of the answer does not. It is the ask.

The habit

Say what you want, who it's for, and what done looks like, in that order. "Write a welcome email for new members of a baking club, three short paragraphs, friendly, ending with a link to the first lesson" works in every tool. "Write an email" works in none of them.

Side by side

• Claude: type it in the chat box, in the app or Claude Desktop.
• ChatGPT: type it in the chat box, on the web or in the desktop app.
• Grok: type it in the chat box at grok.com or in the Grok app.
• Cursor: open the agent panel (Cmd+I on a Mac, Ctrl+I elsewhere). Use Ask mode when you want an answer and no edits; Ask is Cursor's read-only mode.

Try it

Take one request you sent an assistant this week and rewrite it with the outcome, the audience and what done looks like. Send both versions to the same tool and compare.

Checked against Cursor's docs on 2026-10-14: Cursor Ask mode.