Lab: Your first prompt
A hands-on tour: run the same task three ways, watch quality change, and experience the capability zones firsthand.
Time to drive. In this lab you'll run one realistic task three ways and watch the output quality change — the core experience this whole course is built on. Open your AI assistant in another window.
Part 1 — The lazy prompt
Write an email about the office move.
Read the result. It's grammatical, polite… and generic to the point of useless. The model knew nothing, so it invented a plausible office move. Notice that it didn't ask you a single question — it filled every gap with a guess. This is the default failure mode of AI at work: not wrong answers, but confident answers to a question you didn't quite ask.
Part 2 — The informed prompt
Write an email to all staff about our office move. Facts: we move from the 4th floor to the 7th floor of the same building on Friday March 21. Everyone must pack their desk into provided crates by Thursday 5pm. IT moves computers overnight — do not pack laptops, take them home. New desk assignments are in the attached floor plan. Tone: friendly but clear that the Thursday deadline is firm. Keep it under 150 words.
Same model, transformed output — because the prompt carried facts, audience, tone, and constraints. The model's job shrank from 'invent a world' to 'arrange the world I was given'. That's the green zone from the last lesson.
Part 3 — The yellow zone, on purpose
What were our company's revenue numbers last quarter?
It can't know. Watch what it does with an impossible question — a good model says it doesn't know; a weaker one may hedge or invent. Either way, you just tested the boundary instead of assuming it.
Your deliverable
One safety rule before you start: use material with no personal or confidential information. Until Module 4 covers data safety, practice on non-sensitive or invented material only. If nothing safe comes to mind, use this invented scenario: draft an all-staff note announcing that the parking lot closes for resurfacing Monday through Wednesday next week — alternatives are street parking and the 5th Street garage, and facilities is the contact for questions.
- 1Pick a real email or short document you need to produce this week (or use the sample scenario above).
- 2Write the lazy prompt for it. Save the output.
- 3Rewrite the prompt with facts, audience, tone, and constraints (length is the classic constraint). Save that output.
- 4Note the three biggest differences — you'll reuse this exact comparison in your capstone.
Problem set 1
Classify each of these ten workplace tasks as green (reliably strong), yellow (useful but verify), or red (don't delegate), and justify each in one sentence. There are no trick tasks — but four of the ten sit right on the boundary and are worth arguing about with a colleague.
- Summarize a pasted meeting transcript into action items with owners.
- Draft a job ad from a bullet list of requirements you provide.
- Answer 'what does our parental-leave policy say?' without pasting the policy in.
- Total the travel expenses in a pasted 60-row table.
- Translate a technical outage update into a customer-friendly notice.
- Recommend which of three candidates to hire, based on pasted interview notes.
- Explain what a letter of credit is before your first meeting with a trade client.
- Find out what your competitor announced at their event last week.
- Rewrite your own blunt draft to a colleague so it lands more warmly.
- Write the condolence note to a teammate who just lost a parent.