Exercise 4: Turn a Request Into a Template

Objective

Take a one-off AI request for a recurring task and turn it into a reusable prompt template with clear fixed sections and variable placeholders.

Background

The most time-efficient AI users are not the ones who write the best individual prompts. They are the ones who have built libraries of reusable templates for their most common tasks.

A template is a prompt with two types of sections:
- Fixed sections: Instructions that stay the same every time (audience type, tone, format, quality constraints)
- Variable placeholders: The parts that change each use (the specific topic, date, content to be processed)

This exercise builds the habit of converting a one-time good prompt into something that compounds.

Task

Step 1: Choose a recurring task

Pick any task you do at least twice a month that involves AI or would benefit from AI. Examples:

• Weekly team status updates
• Meeting summaries
• Customer escalation emails
• Release notes
• Competitive research summaries
• Project kickoff briefs
• Job posting drafts

If you cannot think of one from your work, use one of these: weekly team status update, meeting notes to action items, or customer inquiry response.

Step 2: Write a strong one-off prompt for the task

Using everything from the course — context, audience, outcome, tone, format, constraints — write a complete, well-structured prompt for one specific instance of this task.

Step 3: Identify what is fixed and what is variable

Go through your prompt and mark:
- Everything that would stay true every time you do this task (fixed)
- Everything that would change each time (variable)

Step 4: Build the template

Rewrite the prompt as a template structure. Replace variable elements with clearly labeled placeholders in brackets. Common placeholders look like:

• [Brief description of this week's topic or focus area]
• [Audience: who this content is specifically for this time]
• [Key updates or content to include: paste here]
• [Any specific constraints or context for this instance]

Step 5: Test it

Fill in the template for one real or realistic instance of the task. Submit to AI. Evaluate whether the output quality is comparable to the one-off version you built in Step 2.

Example

One-off prompt:

Summarize the meeting notes from today's product review into a brief status update. Audience: the engineering team who did not attend. Capture: what was decided, what is blocked, and what the next steps are for each open item. Format: clear three-part structure (decisions, blockers, next steps). Tone: direct and functional. Under 300 words.

Template version:

Summarize the following meeting notes into a brief internal status update.

Audience: [Who did not attend and needs to be informed — e.g., engineering team, stakeholders, client]
Capture: [What specifically needs to be documented — e.g., decisions, blockers, next steps / action items]
Format: [How to structure the output — sections, bullets, etc.]
Tone: Direct and functional. No narrative framing. Just what happened and what happens next.
Length: Under [300 / 200 / 150] words.

Meeting notes:
[Paste notes here]

Success criteria

Your template should:
- Work for at least three different instances of the same task type
- Have at least two fixed sections that do not change
- Have at least two clearly labeled variable placeholders
- Produce output comparable in quality to your one-off prompt when filled in

Optional reflection question

If you shared this template with a teammate who does the same type of task, what would they need to know about using it? Is there anything you would need to add to make it self-explanatory?