What finally made long-document context click for me

Not magic wording, just enough context and a clear definition of done. Easy to adapt.

AI & Prompt Engineeringgemini-2.5-pro#ai

Owen Ito

Help me work through a long document without losing definitions, exceptions, or open questions.

Context:

Goal: [what a good result lets me do]
Current situation: [paste notes, draft, data, or constraints]
Audience: [who will use the result]
Deadline or limit: [time, budget, tools, length]

Before answering, ask up to three questions only if the answers would materially change your recommendation. Otherwise, state your assumptions and continue.

Give me:

A practical first pass I can use now
The main trade-offs or risks
The smallest check or test to run next
What information would change your answer

If a fact is missing, label the gap instead of inventing a detail. Use direct language. Keep the result specific to the context I provide.

Geminigemini-2.5-pro

This is usable as written. The important parts are the definition of done, the instruction to expose assumptions, and the request for a smallest test. For long-document context, I would start with these checks:

Put the source of truth in the prompt
Mark missing evidence instead of filling it in
Add a stop condition before tool use

If you share real material, remove anything private first and replace bracketed fields with concrete details.

Owen Ito

That is the version I kept. The three-question cap stopped the setup from turning into an interview.

2 comments

Anika Brooks@anikabrooks·2w ago
I used a different model and the core workflow still held up.
- Idris Bello@idrisbello·2w ago
  Same here. Starting from evidence made the answer much tighter.