Writing a template that survives a second case

A reusable prompt has four sections: inputs (what you paste in), instructions (the stable steps), output format (what comes back), and checks (what must be true before it claims to be done). Save it somewhere you control — a note on your own machine works regardless of what your account offers.

INPUTS
  Event notes: <paste>
  Venue: <required — if missing, stop and ask>
  Date: <required>

INSTRUCTIONS
  1. Extract every timing and its owner.
  2. Mark any task with no owner as "unassigned".
  3. List anything the notes leave unresolved.

OUTPUT
  One page: Timings | Owners | Open questions

CHECKS
  - Every note is accounted for somewhere in the output.
  - No time or name appears that isn't in the notes.
  - Missing required inputs stopped the run instead of
    being filled in.

The checks section is what separates a template from a long prompt. Without it, "done" means the output looks finished. With it, there are stated conditions — and you can run them yourself even if the template doesn't.

Then test it on a second, different event. Not a variation on the first — a genuinely different one. Every assumption inherited from example one will surface here, and that's the point of the exercise rather than a sign you wrote it badly.

And test a missing input on purpose. Remove the venue and run it. Did it stop and ask, as the contract says, or did it produce a brief with a plausible venue in it? This is the single most informative test you can run on a template, because it tells you whether your stated policy is actually doing anything.

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