Answer
How do you write a prompt for a task you do every week?
Write down what changes and what does not. The reusable part is a form to fill in, not a paragraph to copy.
Separate what stays the same from what changes each time. The fixed part carries the purpose, the constraints and an example of a good output; the changing part is a short list of inputs you fill in.
A recurring task is worth the effort of specification precisely because the specification is written once and used every week. That is the whole economics of it: the same care that would be excessive for a one-off pays back on the fourth run. What gets written should therefore be built for reuse rather than saved after the fact, which means separating the parts that vary from the parts that do not.
The fixed half carries four things. The purpose, which is what the output is for. The constraints, which are what rules an answer out — the things that must not appear, the decisions already taken, the audience. The output specification, which says what to produce. And an example of a previous output you were happy with, which does more than the other three combined because it carries structure, length and register simultaneously.
The variable half should be an explicit list rather than a paragraph to edit. This week's material, this customer's details, this period's figures. Making it a list has a practical benefit beyond tidiness: it shows you at a glance whether you have supplied everything, and a missing input is the most common cause of a run that produces something worse than usual for no apparent reason.
The example is the part that goes stale and needs attention. An output you liked six months ago may no longer reflect what you want, and a template quietly anchored to it will keep producing that. Replacing the example when your standard moves is a two-minute task that nobody thinks to do, and it is the single maintenance item a template has.
Keep it shorter than feels right. The instinct with a reusable artefact is to make it comprehensive, adding every instruction that ever proved necessary, and length degrades adherence. A template that has accumulated a dozen rules is followed approximately. The discipline is that a rule earns its place by having been needed recently, and the ones that have not should come out.
One thing worth adding that most templates omit: what to do when the inputs are incomplete. A recurring task will occasionally arrive without one of the things it needs, and without an instruction the system will proceed and fill the gap. Stating that a missing input should be reported rather than assumed costs one line and prevents the failure that is hardest to notice, because the output looks entirely normal.
The reusable thing is not the wording, it is the list of what you had to supply for it to work.
Siddharth Sharma, Context Theory
Related questions
Should the template live in a file or in the tool?
In a file, if more than one person uses it or if it matters. A template saved inside one person's tool is invisible to everyone else and disappears with their account, and the version everyone actually uses drifts. A shared file is editable, reviewable and portable between products, which matters more than the convenience of having it built in.
How do you know when a template needs updating?
When you find yourself correcting the same thing in the output repeatedly. Each recurring correction is a missing constraint, and moving it into the template turns a weekly fix into a one-off edit. That signal is reliable and is easy to miss because correcting feels faster than editing in the moment.
METHOD
Every figure below carries its source and the date it was verified. Nothing on this page is asserted.
The numbers on this page.
| What | Value | Specific to |
|---|---|---|
| Sub-15-minute compliance — automated routing vs manual only | 62.5% vs 39.1% | Category-wide |
| Close rate — response under 5 minutes vs over 24 hours | 32% vs 12% | Category-wide |
2026 speed-to-lead benchmark · verified
Optifai speed-to-lead benchmark · n=939 companies · Q2 2025–Q1 2026 · verified
What is specific to this page.
| Kind | Claim | Check it against |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow | The economics of specification change with recurrence: the same care that is excessive for a one-off task pays back within a few runs of a weekly one, which is what makes deliberate template construction worthwhile. | Dividing the time spent writing the template by the number of runs expected in a quarter. |
| Response | An explicit list of variable inputs shows at a glance whether everything has been supplied, and a missing input is the most common cause of an unexpectedly poor run on an otherwise reliable task. | Running the template with one input omitted and comparing the output against a complete run. |
| Software | A template anchored to an example output continues producing to that standard after the standard has moved, which makes replacing the example the single recurring maintenance item a template carries. | Comparing the example embedded in an existing template against the current expectation for that output. |
| Constraint | A recurring correction to the same aspect of the output indicates a missing constraint in the template, so moving it into the template converts a weekly fix into a one-off edit. | Recording which aspects of the output are corrected on each run over a month. |
Each row would be wrong on another industry's page. Where a sourced figure exists it is in the table above instead; these are the constraints that shape the work and do not happen to be numbers.
Start with the measurement.
Reading about a benchmark is not the same as knowing your own number. The audit produces yours, measured rather than estimated.
$497 · delivered in 5 business days · credited against month one