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There's a frustration that almost everyone runs into after a few weeks of using AI tools seriously. You write what feels like a detailed, well-structured prompt. You include the tone, the format, the instructions. You've read the prompt engineering guides. And the output still comes back generic. Still feels like it could have been written for anyone, about anything.

The usual advice is to write a better prompt. But that advice misses the actual problem.

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Here's the thing about prompts that most guides don't say clearly enough. A prompt is a request. And like any request, how well it lands depends almost entirely on how much shared understanding already exists between you and the person you're asking.

Think about how you'd work with a colleague who knows nothing about your company, your clients, your preferences, or your past decisions. You'd have to explain everything from scratch every single time. Even a perfectly worded request would produce something generic because they simply don't have enough background to do better.

That's exactly what's happening when you drop a detailed prompt into a fresh chat window and wonder why the output doesn't feel right. The model has no memory of who you are, what you're working on, how you communicate, or what you've already decided. You're starting from zero every single time, no matter how good the prompt is.

The people getting consistently strong results from tools like Claude and ChatGPT aren't writing better prompts. They're building better context. The prompt is step two. Context is step one.

Context isn't a vague idea. In practice, it means files.

Specifically, it means a collection of documents you've written that capture the things a new colleague would need to understand before they could do useful work for you. Your role. Your communication style. The project you're working on. The decisions you've already made and why. The tone you want. The background someone would need to understand your industry or your audience.

When you work this way, the conversation itself becomes almost trivial. Short, direct instructions work because the model already knows your voice, your context, and your goals. You're not cramming everything into a single message anymore. You're working inside an environment that already understands what you need.

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Simplify Your Docs Today

You don't need to build a complex system on day one. Start with five documents. Write them simply. Update them as you learn. Each one takes about ten minutes the first time.

1. WHO_I_AM.md
Three to five sentences about who you are, what you do, and what you're trying to accomplish. Include any constraints that regularly matter… budget, audience, technical level, communication preferences.

2. WHAT_IM_DOING.md
A short description of the project or task you're currently working on. What success looks like. What you've already tried. What decisions have been made.

3. CONTEXT.md
The background someone would need to understand your work. Industry knowledge, key terms your audience uses, things that are obvious to you but wouldn't be to a newcomer.

4. STYLE_GUIDE.md
How you want things written. Formal or conversational. Short sentences or longer ones. Words you use. Words you avoid. An example or two of writing you like.

5. NEXT_SESSION.md
A brief note at the end of each work session: what you accomplished, what still needs doing, where you left off. This is the file that prevents you from spending the first ten minutes of every session re-explaining everything.

These five files together eliminate most of the context-rebuilding work that makes AI interactions feel repetitive and frustrating. You write it once. You reuse it every time.

Most of the major AI tools now have a dedicated feature for exactly this kind of persistent context. They call it different things, but the idea is the same: a workspace where your files live and stay active across every conversation.

All three platforms are worth trying depending on your existing workflow. If you're already deep in Google Workspace, Gemini Gems integrate cleanly. If you prefer Claude, its Projects feature handles long documents well and maintains context reliably. ChatGPT's Projects are solid for mixed workflows involving code, writing, and research in the same space.

Once you've built your five starter files, you'll naturally start adding more as you work. Through experience, certain types of documents come up again and again. These are the ones worth building deliberately:

Identity Files : Who you are, your goals, your constraints. The foundation everything else rests on.

Context Files : Background on your domain, industry, audience, or subject matter. What someone would need to read before they could do useful work in your space.

Process Files : How you do things. Your workflows, your standard operating procedures, the way you approach recurring tasks.

Style Files : How you want things to sound. Tone, format, vocabulary, examples of writing you like and writing you don't.

Decision Files : Choices you've made on the project and why. This prevents the model from suggesting things you've already ruled out, and stops you from relitigating settled questions.

Pattern Files : What has worked and what hasn't. Notes on approaches you've tried. Observations about what produces good outputs versus poor ones.

Handoff Files : Where you left off. What's done, what's next, what context someone picking this up would need.

The part that makes this approach genuinely worthwhile isn't just that the quality improves. It's that the returns compound.

Your first project requires you to build all five starter files from scratch. Your second project reuses two or three of them and adds a couple of new ones. By the time you're on your fifth or sixth project, a large portion of your context library already exists. You're not starting from zero each time. You're building on what you've built before.

One practical habit worth developing: never delete old versions of your files. When you update your style guide or revise your process document, save the old version with a version number. That approach_v1.md you abandoned might turn out to be exactly right for a different project six months from now. The journey through those versions is often as valuable as the current version.

Prompts are still important. A well-written prompt inside a rich context environment will always outperform a lazy one. But the ceiling for what's possible is set by your context, not your prompt. Fix the context first. Then everything else gets easier.

Pick one project you're currently working on. Before you open a chat window, write three sentences about who you are, three sentences about what you're trying to accomplish, and two sentences about the tone you want. Save it as a text file. Upload it to a Project in whichever tool you use.

Then ask for something you'd normally ask for with a long prompt. Notice the difference.

That's the whole idea. You don't need a complex system to start. You just need a file.

Got a workflow that changed how you work? Reply and tell us.. the best ones get featured in a future issue.

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