Free courses / Prompt Engineering Basics / Lesson 4
Compare and iterate
The second prompt is where the quality comes from.
Treat the first answer as a draft of the prompt, not the answer. Read it, notice what is wrong or missing, and ask again with that fixed: “Good, but assume the reader has never used a spreadsheet.”
Ask for two alternatives and say what should differ: “one formal, one friendly”. Comparing alternatives is faster than perfecting one.
Stop when the answer is good enough to edit, not when it is perfect. Perfect is your job.
- The first answer is a draft of the prompt.
- Alternatives that differ on purpose.
- Stop at good enough to edit.
PIXEL / THE COACH
Almost nobody sends a second message. The quality is nearly all in the second message. This is the cheapest advantage on the whole site.
Try it
Take a prompt from earlier and run three rounds, changing one thing each time. Keep the version that produced the answer you edited least.
Here is my prompt and the answer it gave. Suggest one change that would most improve it, change only that, and show me the new result beside the old.
Then paste it into whichever assistant you use — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot. Not sure which? Meet them all.
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