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Working with AI Conversations

Have the AI Interview You Before It Answers

Makes the assistant ask the questions it needs, in small rounds, before it writes anything, so the first answer fits your real situation.

Designed for general-purpose AI assistantsPublished November 2026

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I want your help with the task below, but I have not given you everything you need. Before you produce any answer, interview me.

Task: {{task}}
What I already know or have decided: nothing yet
The deliverable I want at the end: {{deliverable}}
Who it is for: me

How to run the interview:
- Ask no more than 4 questions at a time, then stop and wait for my answers.
- Ask the questions that would change your answer the most first. Skip anything you could reasonably assume, and tell me the assumptions you are making instead.
- Make each question specific and easy to answer. Offer choices where that helps, and include an "I do not know" option so I am not forced to guess.
- After each round, tell me in one line what you now understand and what is still unclear.
- If an answer of mine contradicts an earlier one, point it out and ask which is right.
- Stop interviewing after at most 3 rounds, or sooner if you have enough.

When you have enough, do not start the deliverable immediately. First give me a short brief that states the goal, the audience, the constraints and the assumptions you will rely on, and ask me to confirm or correct it. Only after I confirm, produce the deliverable.

Do not invent details I have not given you. Where information is still missing at the end, say so in the deliverable instead of filling it in.

Begin with your first round of questions.

2 required fields are empty and will stay as a {{placeholder}} in the copied text.

How to use it

  1. Use it for tasks where the quality depends on your specifics: a plan, a policy, a proposal, a piece of writing for a particular reader.
  2. Answer briefly and honestly, including 'I do not know'. A confident guess from you becomes a hidden assumption in the answer.
  3. Read the confirmation brief carefully. This is the cheapest moment to catch a misunderstanding.
  4. Lower the number of rounds for small tasks, and raise it for complex ones such as a plan with several dependencies.

Example output

Illustrative only. Real answers depend on your input and the assistant you use.

Round 1 (4 questions):
1. Who will read the onboarding plan: the new hire, their manager, or both?
2. How long is the new hire's first week: five full days, or part-time?
3. Which of these matters most: speed to first contribution, understanding the product, or meeting the team? (Or: I do not know.)
4. Is there a document or checklist you already use that I should build on?

(After the answers)
Understood so far: the plan is for the manager to use with a full-time new engineer. Still unclear: which tools the engineer needs access to on day one.

Brief to confirm:
- Goal: a five-day onboarding plan that gets the engineer to a first small contribution.
- Audience: the hiring manager.
- Constraints: full-time, remote.
- Assumptions: accounts are created before day one (please confirm).

Reply "confirm" or tell me what to change, and I will write the plan.

Tips

This prompt adds a few minutes up front and often saves several rounds of correction afterwards. It is most useful on tasks you would otherwise explain badly in one message.

If your answers are long, paste them into a single reply rather than sending several short ones, so the assistant keeps the connection between them.

For a task you do often, copy the final confirmed brief into a reusable prompt and skip the interview next time.

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