# A reusable prompt brief for real workplace tasks

A copy-ready brief, an original customer-email example and a review checklist for turning vague requests into useful drafts.

## Start with a deliverable, not a personality

"Act as an expert" does not tell an assistant which facts it may use or what a usable answer looks like. For a repeatable task, write a short contract between the requester, the assistant and the person who will approve the result. Keep that brief beside the source material, not inside an employee's memory.

## Copy this brief

~~~text
Task: [specific deliverable and intended audience]
Decision owner: [person who approves the work]
Approved inputs: [files or facts, with dates and source labels]
Boundaries: [private data to exclude; actions not authorized]
Required output: [format, length and required fields]
Uncertainty: flag missing evidence; do not fill gaps with inventions
Review: [checks a human must complete before use]
~~~

Use headings or delimiters to distinguish instructions from material to summarize. Include only context that helps the task. A long transcript of unrelated discussions can obscure the current requirement. These are design habits, not a promise that prompting alone makes a model reliable.

## Worked example: a delayed order

Use this synthetic fixture: order SAMPLE-42 was due October 20; the warehouse confirmed October 23 as the revised dispatch date. No carrier delivery estimate exists. The customer should receive a courteous update, but no refund or discount is authorized.

The task is to draft a 120-word email. Require the new dispatch date, an apology, a distinction between dispatch and delivery, and an invitation to contact support. Explicitly forbid inventing a delivery date or promising compensation. Ask for a second section listing facts that need verification; do not send either section automatically.

A satisfactory draft says the order is expected to dispatch October 23 and that delivery timing will be confirmed separately. A polished promise that it will arrive October 24 fails, even if its tone is excellent. Reject a draft that adds a discount. The reviewer compares every commitment with the fixture before approving it.

## Reuse and improve

Save the brief, one approved output and a failing example together. Test the same brief on a normal case, a missing-date case and a contradictory-date case. A useful revision should improve those cases without making the normal one worse. Record the tool and test date; reassess after changing the prompt, model or source process.

Read next: [verify AI-assisted work](/resources/ai-output-verification-checklist).

## Sources and review

Reviewed October 16, 2026. Template and SAMPLE-42 fixture are original EAIRI examples. Primary references: [OpenAI prompting guidance](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/prompt-engineering) and [Anthropic context engineering](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents).

Source: https://eairi.org/resources/workplace-ai-prompt-brief-template