The prompt method:
your facts in, a real draft out

Two prompts. Same tool, same phone, same twenty minutes. A prompt is just the instructions you type into the chat box — that's the whole word. The tool is whichever chat app you picked on the manual's hub — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Copilot — opened in your phone's browser.

The first one is an order barked at a machine that has never met you, never seen your town, and doesn't know a wax ring from a wedding ring. The second one is a materials delivery. Nobody frames a house out of whatever happens to be in the truck.

This page is one full working session with the second kind. By the end you'll have a real draft — built from your facts, inspected by you, close to your voice. No magic words, no course to buy.

Your facts come first

The machine's half of this job is arranging words. Your half is supplying the truth it arranges. That order never flips.

Before you touch the chat box, gather the raw material. If you've done the say-it-don't-type-it ritual — talking your work into your phone and keeping the transcript — you already have it. That memo is the payload this method wants.

No memo? Two minutes with a notes app: your trade, your town, years in, the services you want more of, the area you'll drive, what you charge to show up, the jobs you turn down, how fast you call back. True items only. This list is the load-bearing wall.

The hype demos skip this part: a guy types six words, a business materializes, everybody's amazed — and nobody ever checks whether a word of it was true. You're about to run the same tool in the opposite order. That's why yours will be worth keeping.

The loaded prompt, line by line

Fill this in and paste the whole thing:

The loaded prompt — fill in the brackets, paste all five lines

Who I am: a [your trade] in [your town], [years] in the trade.

Who this is for: a homeowner who just searched "[the problem, the way they'd type it]".

My true facts: [paste your memo or notes here — services, area, hours, what you charge to show up, what you won't do, how fast you answer]

The job: write a plain first draft of [the thing — a service page, an about page, a reply to a customer].

The rule: use ONLY the facts I gave you. If you need a fact I didn't give you, ask me for it. Do not invent anything.

What each line is doing:

Who I am pins the draft to a real trade in a real place — no drifting into anywhere-copy.

Who it's for aims the draft at one reader with one problem. A page written for everyone comes out addressed to no one.

My true facts is the delivery. The more you unload here, the less room the machine has to fill.

The job names one deliverable. One. "Do my whole website" is how the usual prompt fails. "First draft of my water-heater page" is a task with edges.

The rule is the whole ballgame. Left alone, these tools patch holes in your facts with something that merely sounds right. That last line converts holes into questions instead. When it comes back asking — what's your service area, do you take weekend calls — answer with the truth and add it to your notes for next time. That's the machine working for you instead of the other way around.

Why the lazy prompt hands you mush

Short version of the how-it-works chapter: the machine writes by predicting what usually comes next. Type "write me a website for a plumber" and give it nothing else, and "what usually comes next" is the average of every plumber page it has ever seen — the same polished, says-nothing paragraphs you've already skimmed on a hundred competitors' sites. Not because the tool is broken. Because plausible-and-generic is exactly what you ordered when you handed it no facts to beat.

Mush in thirty seconds is still mush. Load the prompt, and the same thirty seconds returns something only you could have supplied — because you supplied it.

The verify pass: read it like an inspector

The draft is on your screen. Treat it as roughed in. Nothing gets covered up until the inspector walks it, and the inspector is you.

Read every line and ask one question: did I feed it that fact?

• A fact you gave it: stays.
• A fact you didn't give it: gets cut, or gets corrected to the truth. There is no third option.
• Every number, price, and claim: checked against reality — your price book, your calendar, your license — never against the machine, and never by asking a second AI to check the first.

As of 2026, the tool itself carries a standing warning, right under the chat box: it can make mistakes, and important information should be checked. That's the manufacturer's own label. Read it like any tool label — as the operating limit, not the fine print.

This pass takes about five minutes on a one-page draft, and it is not the optional step for extra-careful owners. It is the method. Skip it and you haven't used AI to write your page — you've let it write somebody's page and put your name on it.

Tell it what's wrong in plain words

The draft that survives inspection will usually still sound off — too smooth, too salesy, too pleased with itself. Fixing that takes no editing skill, just the plain sentences you'd use on a helper:

• "Too salesy. Say it the way I'd say it to a customer on the phone."
• "Shorter. Half this length."
• "You dropped my service area — put it back."
• "Cut the word 'passionate.' Nobody in my trade talks like that."

It redrafts in seconds. Then the redraft gets the same line-by-line read, because a rewrite can slip in a new invention as easily as it fixes the tone. Say what's wrong, read what comes back, keep what's true — that loop is the actual skill, the thing the prompt-course salesmen dress up as a secret formula. It's ten minutes of practice — run it once on a real page and it's yours.

When the drafts stop getting better, stop. A plain draft that's all true beats a slick one you'd have to re-inspect from scratch.

The inspector's rule

One line, and it governs every AI job in this manual:

Work this way and the machine never speaks for you. It does the framing; you hold the level. Your facts went in. Your draft came out. You inspected everything in between.

Next: the copy jobs — the same loaded frame, pre-bent for each specific job.