How do you create good-quality AI prompts that will provide useful answers? As you may know from previous posts I’ve written on AI, I enjoy playing with new toys. I recently discovered several AI tools that can help you craft decent prompts. These may save you from disappearing down rabbit holes and wasting hours attempting to nail the perfectly phrased question. It’s amazing how much time you can waste on these tasks when AI is supposed to be all about saving time.
I don’t know whether you’ve tried crafting prompts, but unless you create your prompts using very specific requests, you just end up with word salad.
First, there are some general principles when you’re crafting a prompt that can help you refine and define what you need.
Prompt principles*:
Clarity and specificity- Specific prompts help the AI to understand and respond with precise information. Rather than “tell me about rivers’” ask “Provide an overview of the major rivers of the UK and their unique characteristics.”
Context and background – providing this helps AI to understand and respond with precise information. E.g. “Suggest a beginner-friendly hiking trail within 10 miles of Salisbury in Wiltshire, assuming moderate fitness levels.”
Conciseness and relevance -Verbose prompts can confuse AI or lead it to focus on less relevant aspects of your request. Aim for a balance – provide enough detail for clarity and context but be as concise as possible. For example, “What are the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet, focusing on heart health and weight management?” is concise yet provides clear direction for AI’s response.
Three free prompt generators I experimented with
Each of the following tools helps refine your prompts and produce better responses than muddling through on your own. I’ve selected three examples I’ve tested out, with varying degrees of success. See what you think and then try them out for yourself.
Bearing the principles above in mind, I cut and pasted my prompt into three different prompt generators.
My initial prompt was: “From these 3 leadership strengths, create a snappy, superpower. The strengths are strategic awareness, persuasion and problem-solving.” Each of the AI tools then took my initial prompts and improved the wording, before I then cut and pasted the new prompt into Chat GTP.
1. Junia
Junia is Chat GTP’s prompt-generator tool.
On entering my initial wording, or ‘base prompt’, Junia reframed my wording to:
“Create a compelling superhero-style leadership ability by combining these three strengths: Strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving. Describe this unique superpower in a concise, dynamic way that highlights how these abilities work together synergistically. Include a catchy name for this power, explain how it manifests in action, and detail its practical applications in leadership scenarios. Consider how this combination would enable a leader to anticipate challenges, influence outcomes, and implement effective solutions in high-stakes situations.”
Response
I duly cut and pasted the more detailed prompt into Chat GPT and received the following suggestion:
Superpower: “Visionforge”
Description: Visionforge is the ultimate leadership ability that blends strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving into a seamless force for decisive action. This power enables a leader to see beyond immediate obstacles, inspire unwavering commitment, and forge innovative solutions that turn crises into triumphs.
How It Works in Action:
- Foresight Precision: The leader instantly maps out potential challenges, foreseeing obstacles and opportunities before they emerge.
- Influence Pulse: With a commanding presence and compelling rhetoric, they rally teams, stakeholders, and even adversaries toward a shared vision.
- Adaptive Mastery: When faced with complex problems, they intuitively construct solutions that balance logic, creativity, and real-world feasibility.
Practical Applications in Leadership:
- Crisis Navigation: In high-stakes situations, they pre-emptively neutralize risks, guiding teams through uncertainty with unshakable confidence.
- Strategic Negotiation: They reframe discussions to align diverse interests, ensuring win-win outcomes in competitive or high-pressure environments.
- Innovation Acceleration: They transform abstract ideas into actionable strategies, cutting through stagnation and driving progress with relentless momentum.
With Visionforge, a leader doesn’t just react to change—they shape the future, ensuring that every challenge becomes an opportunity for transformation.
My thoughts:
Hmm. Well, it’s better quality than the result generated when I entered my base prompt directly into Chat GPT. There is wording that can be worked with and which may be made useful. However, I remain unconvinced by the superpower of ‘Visionforge.’ It also does feel very jargon-heavy.
2. Feedough
Next, I headed to Feedough, a platform designed to support entrepreneurs, where the same base prompt was converted into:
“You are a creative branding specialist with over 15 years of experience in crafting impactful personal branding statements. Your expertise lies in transforming individual strengths into captivating superpowers that resonate with audiences and highlight unique qualities.
Your task is to create a snappy superpower statement from the following leadership strengths:
- Strength 1: Strategic awareness
- Strength 2: Persuasion
- Strength 3: Problem solver
Keep in mind that the superpower should encapsulate the essence of these strengths in a way that is engaging, memorable, and inspiring. It should reflect the combination of these attributes and how they contribute to effective leadership.
For example, if I provided strengths like “innovation, collaboration, and resilience,” your output might be something like “The Catalyst: A visionary leader who inspires innovation through collaboration and overcomes challenges with unwavering resilience.”
Response:
Copying this into Chat GPT produced:
The Architect: A Mastermind of Strategy, Influence, and Solutions
A visionary force, The Architect seamlessly anticipates challenges, persuades with precision, and constructs powerful solutions that drive success. With an unmatched ability to see the bigger picture, rally others to action, and solve problems with strategic finesse, this leader doesn’t just navigate change—they design the future with purpose and impact.
My thoughts
I rather liked this response, which is a lot snappier and more compelling than the first version.
3. Musely
Finally, I tried Musely. Musely offers a comprehensive suite of AI tools designed to enhance productivity and simplify content creation for users across different fields.
My base prompt conversion led to the following suggestions, leaving me to decide which to try out. Musely has an ‘advanced’ section where you can specify further how to boundary your prompt- for example, content type, tone of voice and target audience. I ticked ‘academic audience’. Here is a selection of the suggested prompts.
- Generate 10 humorous academic prompts for professionals in education, focusing on combining three leadership strengths (strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving) into a single superpower, suitable for an AI prompt generator.
- Craft a snappy, superhero-esque name for the ultimate leadership superpower forged from strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving. Think academic, humorous, and professional.
- Develop 10 funny, yet academically rigorous, names for a leadership superpower resulting from the fusion of strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving. The target audience is education professionals.
- Create 10 humorous names for a leadership superpower that integrates strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving. The tone should be academic and appropriate for professionals in the education sector.
- Brainstorm 10 witty and academic names for a leadership superpower born from the combination of strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving. The target audience is education professionals. Humorous tone preferred.
- Produce 10 humorous, yet academically appropriate, names for a leadership superpower that arises from the synergy of strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving. The intended audience is education professionals.
I chose:
“Create 10 humorous names for a leadership superpower that integrates strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving. The tone should be academic and appropriate for professionals in the education sector.”
Response
I received, when I pasted Musely’s prompt into Chat GPT:
Here are 10 witty names for your leadership superpower, blending strategic awareness, persuasion, and problem-solving with an academic and humorous touch:
- The Pedagogical Persuader – Mastering the art of compelling arguments, even in staff meetings.
- The Syllabus Strategist – Always three steps ahead, with contingency plans in the appendix.
- The Dean of Diplomacy – Diffusing conflicts with the precision of a well-structured syllabus.
- The Tenure Tactician – Navigating institutional politics with finesse and a dry sense of humour.
- The Scholarly Solver – Finding elegant solutions where others see administrative nightmares.
- The Dissertation Whisperer – Guiding teams through complexity with the patience of a thesis advisor.
- The Curriculum Conductor – Orchestrating people, projects, and policies with symphonic harmony.
- The Rubric of Reason – Making every decision measurable, fair, and open to peer review.
- The Faculty Alchemist – Transforming committee chaos into golden consensus.
- The Academic Argonaut – Leading the intellectual voyage with wisdom, persuasion, and a whiteboard.
My thoughts
This was a far punchier selection. Several suggestions made me smile. I would certainly use both Musely and Mindough in future to refine my prompts. I was less impressed with the generality of Junia.
Which tools would you recommend?
I am sure some of you will have come across similar or better tools. Do share if you’ve come across any particularly good ones.
*Suggestions adapted from www.codeacademy.com