What Good Research Prompts Have in Common

You don't need a hundred research prompts. You need five you trust and actually reuse.

Cut before you polish

Treat the first output as a draft, not a verdict. The prompt does the typing; you keep the judgment about what ships.

• Save the prompt that worked so the next person reuses it
• Have the model flag what it could not cover
• Keep one ask per prompt — chaining beats cramming

Generate options, not answers

Lock the parts that never change and leave one slot for the variable. Now every run shares a family resemblance instead of starting from scratch.

• Keep one ask per prompt — chaining beats cramming
• Compare two outputs instead of trusting one
• Lower the reading level, then check what broke

Write down what you never want as explicitly as what you do. The exclusions often do more work than the instructions.