A prompt library for real business tasks

A good prompt isn't a magic phrase. It's a clear brief. We and our clients use the prompts below day to day. Copy any of them, swap the bracketed parts for your own details, and adjust from there. Read the four rules first, though. Once you have them, you'll write better prompts than any library can hand you.

Four rules that fix most prompts

• Give it a role and a goal. "You are an experienced [customer-service lead]. Your goal is to [reply so the customer feels heard and knows the next step]." The context steers everything after it.
• Show, don't just tell. Paste in one good example of what you want. A single sample of your tone or format does more than three paragraphs describing it.
• State the constraints. Length, tone, who it's for and what to avoid. "Under 120 words, warm but not gushing, no apologising twice."
• Ask for the format you'll actually use. A table, a few options, or an email ready to send. Vague in, vague out.

Email & communication

Reply to a tricky customer email.

You are a calm, experienced [customer-service lead] for [business]. Below is an email from a customer who is [frustrated about a late order]. Write a reply that acknowledges the problem plainly, avoids over-apologising, gives one clear next step, and keeps it under 120 words. Match this tone: [paste a past reply you were happy with]. Here's their email: [paste].

Turn messy notes into a clear update.

Here are my rough notes from a [client meeting]. Write a short, professional summary email to [the client] covering what we agreed, who owns what, and the next date. Keep it skimmable with a couple of bold headers. Notes: [paste].

Content & marketing

Draft options, not one guess.

You are a [B2B] copywriter. Write five subject lines for an email announcing [thing]. Range from plain and clear to a little bolder. Audience: [describe]. No clickbait, no emoji. After the list, tell me which one you'd pick and why in one sentence.

Repurpose one thing into many.

Here's a [blog post / transcript]. Pull out the three most useful ideas and turn each into a short LinkedIn post in my voice, practical, no hype, first person. Match this sample of my writing: [paste]. Source: [paste].

Admin & operations

Extract structure from a wall of text.

Read the [supplier email] below and pull out, as a table: what they're offering, the price, the delivery date, and anything that needs my decision. Flag anything ambiguous rather than guessing. Text: [paste].

Draft a first-pass process doc.

I'm going to describe how we currently do [onboarding a new client]. Turn it into a clear, numbered standard-operating-procedure a new hire could follow, and list any steps that sound risky or easy to forget. Here's how it works today: [describe].

Analysis & decisions

Pressure-test your own thinking.

I'm considering [decision]. Here's my reasoning: [paste]. Argue the strongest case against it, list what I might be assuming without evidence, and tell me the one thing I should check before committing. Be direct, not diplomatic.

Make a comparison you can act on.

Compare [option A] and [option B] for a [small Australian business] like mine, described here: [context]. Give a short table on cost, effort, and risk, then a one-line recommendation with the main trade-off spelled out.

Every prompt here follows the same pattern: a role, some context, a constraint and the exact output shape. That's most of the skill. Once it's a reflex, the bigger win is getting your whole team using it the same way. Past a point, we build the good prompts into systems, so nobody has to remember them at all.

How we'd use this. Take two, adapt them to your own wording, and run them for a week before adding more. A library of forty prompts nobody opens is worth less than three that get used daily. Most of the value here is in the reasoning behind each one, more than the exact text.