Prompts
How long before we prompters become the prompted?
The right prompt at the right time. Mantra for yourself. Technique for the machine. Same mechanism, both directions.
Two Directions
| Direction | Prompt | What It Aligns |
|---|---|---|
| You → Machine | Context, role, constraints | AI output to your intention |
| Mantra → You | Conviction, identity, values | Your action to your purpose |
| Pepeha → Community | Mountain, river, waka, people | Identity to belonging |
A good teacher makes hard things clear. A good coach makes clear things usable.
Tight Five
The Tight Five is a cognitive technology. Any domain worth mastering can be compressed into five tightly-bound elements. The skill is not choosing any five. The skill is choosing the five that bind.
Each headline is a key, not the full lock. You do not carry the whole system in working memory. You carry the key. When the moment comes, you turn it, and the depth is there because you did the work.
A slogan is empty compression. A mantra is compressed depth.
Three meanings. One word.
| Meaning | Origin | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| Bound | Rugby | The tight five are bound together under pressure |
| Polished | Comedy | A tight five is refined until every word earns its place |
| Incompressible | Both | Nothing can be removed without weakening the whole |
The test: remove one part and the whole thing weakens. The count is not the point. The binding is.
The Drift Table
| When you feel... | Turn this key | It opens to... |
|---|---|---|
| Lost in activity | Why does this matter? | Value — real world worth |
| Uncertain about direction | What truths guide me? | Belief — grounded intention |
| Overwhelmed | What do I control? | Control — leverage and levers |
| Undifferentiated | What do I see others don't? | Perspective — your edge |
| Busy but not progressing | How do I know it's working? | Performance — reality, not motion |
Instances
Any framework worth using compresses into five. Remove one and the whole thing weakens.
The Tight Five is meta. A schema for building schemas. Different domains produce different fives. The pattern stays the same: five, tight, bound.
| Domain | The Five | What Binds Them |
|---|---|---|
| Business | Principles, Performance, Platform, Process, Players | Value creation |
| Wellbeing | Wairua, Hinengaro, Tinana, Whānau, Whenua | Holistic health |
| Rugby | 2 props, hooker, 2 locks | The scrum |
| Questions | Why? What's true? What do I control? Who's with me? Is it working? | The loop |
| Agency | Capabilities, Character, Drive, Foundations, Money | Agency |
| Rhetoric | Ethos, Logos, Pathos, Kairos, Topos | Persuasion |
| Archetypes | Dreamer, Realist, Engineer, Coach, Philosopher | The swarm |
| Consulting | Diagnose, Framework, Prioritise, Recommend, Measure | Client transformation |
| Prompt Deck | Capture, Inquire, Design, Platform, People | The instrument |
| Forces | AI, Blockchain, Crypto, Devices, Energy | The operating system |
Most frameworks diagnose. The Tight Five compounds. The Cascade graduates each element from phrase to rule to system.
| Diagnostic | Instrument |
|---|---|
| Snapshot | Returns weekly |
| Consultant fills it | Founder fills it |
| Delivered as PDF | Delivered as open loops |
| Expires | Zeigarnik keeps it active |
A schema does not just describe reality. It selects what you can see.
| Meta | Matter |
|---|---|
| Schema | Knowledge |
| Pattern | Instance |
| Intention | Attention |
| Dream | Engineering |
| Invisible | Visible |
| The five you choose | The world you see |
Business five
The business instance in the table above: Principles, Performance, Platform, Process, Players — the value-creation stack. Same binding rule: remove one and the system weakens.
Questions five
The questions instance: Why? What's true? What do I control? Who's with me? Is it working? — the loop compressed into prompts.
Platform for growth
At country, industry, and venture scale, platform is the enabling stack people build on: machines, tools, software, property rights, and laws. Those institutions either face outward (agency compounds) or inward (gatekeeping compounds). Same physics, opposite vector.
Why Prompts Work
Working memory
The Zeigarnik effect. An open question stays active in working memory until resolved. Each of the five questions is a deliberately opened loop. "Why does this matter?" creates tension only your own answer can close.
In a pitch, each prompt loads behavioural biases:
| Layer | What it does | Bias loaded |
|---|---|---|
| Pitch (the claim) | Confirms what they feel | Confirmation, loss aversion |
| Prompt (the question) | Opens a loop they can't close | Zeigarnik, hyperbolic discounting |
| Depth (the link) | Offers resolution through co-creation | IKEA effect, reciprocity |
The pitch is the berley. The prompt is the hook. The depth link is the net.
Changing Minds
The same five that steady you can open someone else. Not by telling. By asking.
When you want to change a mind, you do not lead with your conclusion. You lead with the prompt that turns the key in their lock. One question at a time. Each one opens a door they already have.
| Prompt | What it opens |
|---|---|
| Why does this matter to you? | Value — what they are for |
| What truths guide you here? | Belief — what they will not betray |
| What do you control in this? | Leverage — what they can move |
| What do you see others don't? | Perspective — where their edge is |
| How would you know it's working? | Performance — what good looks like |
When they say it aloud, the mind has already changed.
The Inner Loop
You get what you propagate.
Vicious and virtuous cycles run on the same engine. Same mechanism, opposite direction. The Tight Five is how you choose which cycle you're in.
| Vicious | Mechanism | Virtuous |
|---|---|---|
| Negative pictures | Setpoint | Positive pictures |
| Reactive mantras | Trigger | Intentional mantras |
| Pessimism compounds | Muscle | Optimism compounds |
| Drift replaces discipline | Practice | Habits embed standards |
| No cadence, no correction | Rhythm | Planning at every level |
| Activity without outcomes | Evidence | Progress measured by state |
The inner loop is: choose positive pictures → compress to five setpoints → reinforce with mantras → train the muscle → embed in habits → plan at cadence → measure progress → refine the pictures.
The journey is the reward. Not the destination. The loop itself is the value.
The Agent Prompt
"The prompt" as a singular, chat-based interaction is becoming obsolete. As models evolve into autonomous agents, prompting has fractured into four disciplines:
| Discipline | What It Is | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| Prompt Craft | Writing clear instructions, guardrails, and examples | Table stakes for immediate AI responses |
| Context Engineering | Curating the optimal set of tokens (tools, docs, memory) | Providing comprehensive information for autonomous tasks |
| Intent Engineering | Encoding organizational purpose and decision boundaries | Aligning agents with strategy to prevent the wrong optimization |
| Specification Engineering | Writing agent-fungible documents that agents execute against | Embedding all necessary oversight without human intervention |
Specification Primitives
To bridge the gap left by the absence of a real-time human operator, agents require embedded oversight. Five primitives:
- Self-contained problem statements
- Acceptance criteria
- Constraint architecture
- Decomposition
- Evaluation design
Modality Picks
Which tool for which job? First choice is what you reach for. Second is where you go when the first doesn't fit.
| Modality | JTBD | 1st Choice | 2nd Choice | Prompt Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text — Reasoning | Think through hard problems | Claude | OpenAI o-series | Analysis |
| Text — Research | Find and synthesise answers | Perplexity | Gemini Deep Research | Strategy |
| Text — Writing | Draft, edit, persuade | Claude | Writer.com | Communication |
| Code | Build and ship software | Claude Code | Cursor | Coding |
| Web/UI | Design interfaces from prompts | v0 | Bolt / Lovable | Web Design |
| Image | Generate visual assets | Midjourney | Flux / Ideogram | Visual Art |
| Video — Creative | Motion as meaning | Runway | Kling / Sora | Video |
| Video — Promo | Conversion in seconds | Arcads | Reel Farm / CapCut | Promo Video |
| Music | Feeling with structure | Suno | Udio | Music |
| Voice — TTS | Text to natural speech | ElevenLabs | Cartesia | Communication |
| Voice — STT | Transcribe speech to text | Whisper | Deepgram | Communication |
| Voice — Agents | Conversational AI on phone | VAPI | Bland AI | Communication |
| 3D | Generate 3D assets from text/image | Tripo | Meshy | — |
| Games | Interactive loops that teach | Unity AI | Inworld | Games |
First Principles
Prompt Engineering Five rules that apply to every modality — text, voice, image, music, video, code, games.
| Principle | What It Does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Context | Ground the model in your world | "You are a senior infrastructure engineer reviewing a Terraform plan" |
| Constraint | Narrow the output space | "Under 200 words, bullet points only, no speculation" |
| Example | Show, don't describe | "Input: X → Output: Y. Now do Z." |
| Iteration | Refine through feedback loops | "That's close. Now make it more concise and remove the passive voice" |
| Structure | Shape the response format | "Use XML tags: <analysis>, <recommendation>, <risk>" |
Every technique in every star page is a combination of these five. Chain of thought = Structure + Iteration. Persona prompting = Context + Constraint. Negative prompting = Constraint applied to pixels. Same five principles, any input format to any output format — see the full modality matrix.
Capability Matrix
| Domain | Prompt Page | Archetype | Outcome | Tools |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analysis | Analysis | The Realist | Insight and pattern | Perplexity, Claude, Gemini |
| Strategy | Strategy | The General | Leverage and plan | Claude, OpenAI o-series |
| Predictions | Predictions | The Oracle | Calibrated foresight | Superforecaster frameworks |
| Coding | Coding | The Engineer | Structure and function | Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code |
| Web Design | Web Design | The Craftsman | Interfaces that work | v0, Bolt, Lovable |
| Visual Art | Visual Art | The Artist | Composition and style | Midjourney, DALL-E, Flux |
| Music | Music | The Composer | Feeling with structure | Suno, Udio, Stable Audio |
| Video | Video | The Director | Motion as meaning | Runway, Sora, Kling |
| Promo Video | Promo Video | The Advertiser | Conversion in seconds | Runway, Kling, Pika, CapCut |
| Games | Games | The Designer | Loops that teach | Unity AI, Inworld, Scenario |
| Voice | Communication | The Translator | Speech and text bridge | Whisper, ElevenLabs, Deepgram, Claude Voice |
| Communication | Communication | The Messenger | Influence and scale | Grammarly, Claude, Jasper |
| Prompt Deck | Prompt Deck | The Presenter | Conviction in 5 cards | v0, Bolt, Claude Code |
| Creative | Creative | The Dreamer | Novelty and vision | All of the above |
| Library | Library | The Librarian | Copy, paste, iterate | LLMs |
Context
- Deterministic vs Probabilistic — Prompts compress probabilistic space into deterministic action
- Mantra — Routing prompts for the human journey
- Persuasion — Rhetoric: ethos, logos, pathos, kairos, topos
- Matrix Thinking — Empty cells are prompts for your subconscious
- Prompting Capability — The framework across all modalities
- AI Modalities — The full input/output matrix
- Routes — Forks, obstacles, signs, bridges
Links
- Anthropic Prompt Library
- OpenAI Prompt Engineering
- Learn Prompting
- Prompt Engineering Roadmap
- Gemini Prompt Gallery
- Anthropic XML Guide
Questions
What five would you choose if you could only hold five — and would they work for both preparation and persuasion?
- If prompting is alignment in both directions (you to machine, mantra to you), which direction are you worse at?
- When the same five serves as mantra and pitch, what does that reveal about the quality of the compression?
- If the count is not the point but the binding is, how do you test whether your five are truly tight?
- What changes when you stop telling people your five and start listening for which five they need?