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The question that cleaned up a useful second-opinion prompt

The first answers were broad enough to be useless. This version asks for assumptions, evidence, and a next step.

AI & Prompt Engineeringclaude-opus-4.5#ai #claude #decision-making #reasoning

Noor Grant

Help me challenge a plan, find hidden assumptions, and suggest the smallest test that could disprove it.

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.

Claudeclaude-opus-4.5

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 a useful second-opinion prompt, 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.

Noor Grant

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

4 comments

Eli Grant@eligrant·2mo ago
Tried the smaller-test idea on a useful second-opinion prompt. It exposed the bad assumption pretty quickly.
- Leo Fischer@leofischer·2mo ago
  Worth testing. I would still keep the source material beside the answer.
Nia Wright@niawright·2mo ago
This is close to how I handle a useful second-opinion prompt, especially the bit about marking unknowns.
Anika Brooks@anikabrooks·2w ago
The concrete example is what makes this worth saving.