Fourteen prompts, and what each is for
- Summarise a long document for someone who will not read it: audience, length, and the one decision it should support.
- Rewrite something you wrote in a hurry: keep the meaning, cut the padding, same tone.
- Turn a mess of notes into a list with headings and an owner for each item.
- Draft a reply that says no politely, without inventing a reason you cannot defend.
- Compare two options against criteria you name, and end with the trade-off, not a verdict.
- Make a checklist from a process you already know, then delete what you would never do.
- Explain a term in plain words as if to a colleague who is new, with one example.
- Turn a wall of text into a table with the columns you name.
- Find the three claims in a draft that need a source, and say what kind of source would settle each.
- Turn a customer question into a short answer plus one follow-up question.
- Plan a week of work around fixed appointments you paste in.
- Cut a page down to a paragraph without losing the ask.
- Find the contradictions between two documents you paste side by side.
- Turn an interview-style transcript into notes under headings you choose.
How to use them without trusting them
Treat every answer as a first draft from a fast assistant with no access to your files and no knowledge of your client. Check names, numbers and quotes against the source.
Change the blanks before running one. A prompt with someone else's context in it produces an answer about someone else's situation.
- Copy the prompt and read it once for the blanks: audience, length, tone, constraints.
- Paste your own material after the instruction, not before.
- Run it, then edit the instruction - not the answer - if the shape is wrong.
- Delete any sentence in the answer that is not something you would defend yourself.
Where this goes wrong
- Sending client material to a tool your client has not agreed to.
- Copying an answer straight into an email with a name or a figure nobody checked.
- Using a prompt for a decision that needs your judgement: hiring, pricing, medical, legal.
- Collecting prompts and never running one. Fourteen you use beat four hundred you saved.
The free tool for this
There is no calculator that answers this one honestly, so here is the free set: eight calculators for rates, quotes, invoices, splits, prices and fees. They run in the page and send nothing anywhere.
If you would rather not build it yourself
That is the free Prompt Sampler - fourteen prompts, the variables marked, and a page of notes on what to check before you use the output. Prompt Sampler is free. Get it free, and there is a plain page about it here: what it holds.
Questions people actually ask
Do these work with any AI tool?
They are written as plain instructions, so they work in any chat tool that takes text. The shape requests - bullets, a table, three paragraphs - are what make them portable.
Why is this one free?
Because a sampler is a fair trade: you get something you can use today, and if it earns a place in your week, the full set is there.