The Pitch That Almost Happened 🎯
Picture this: you’ve got an idea you’re ready to fund. You’ve run it past ChatGPT, gotten the usual “here are some risks to consider,” and you’re feeling good about it. Then a Reddit user named u/Professional-Rest138 shared a trick that stopped them from doing exactly that, twice.
The trick isn’t a plugin or a fancy prompt template. It’s three one-word codes you define once at the start of a chat, then fire off anytime for the rest of the conversation. One of them, AUTOPSY, assumes your idea already failed and walks backward through exactly why. Not “what are the risks.” A cause of death.
The other two do different jobs. IQ 200 tells the model to stop dumbing things down and think as hard as it can before answering. EXPOSED turns the mirror around and asks it to name your patterns, your blind spots, the stuff you already know but haven’t said out loud. Together, the three codes cover the three moments that actually matter: before you commit money, before you settle for a shallow answer, and before you keep repeating a mistake you haven’t named yet.
Why It Matters 🔍
Most of us ask AI for feedback the same way every time, and it gives back the same polite, hedge-everything answer every time. “Consider the risks of X” reads like a checklist nobody actually follows. It doesn’t feel real enough to change your mind.
A one-word trigger changes the math. Once you’ve defined AUTOPSY, IQ 200, or EXPOSED at the top of a chat, using them costs nothing. You don’t have to retype a paragraph of instructions when you’re tired or in a hurry, so you actually use them. And when the AI is told to treat your plan as already dead instead of just “at risk,” it stops hedging and starts diagnosing.
There’s a psychological trick baked into this too. Framing something as a completed failure, rather than a possible one, is a known way to surface problems people otherwise talk themselves out of seeing. Researchers call it a premortem. AUTOPSY is basically a premortem you can trigger with one word instead of running a whole meeting for it. You skip the calendar invite and go straight to the diagnosis.
How-To Steps 🛠️
Here’s how to set this up in any chat:
- Open a new conversation with your AI of choice.
- Paste this block first, before anything else:
For the rest of this conversation, treat these as instructions whenever I use them:
AUTOPSY = assume this already failed. Work backward and tell me exactly why it died, every weak point, in order of what killed it first.
IQ 200 = stop simplifying and hedging. Think as deeply as you can before answering, respond at the highest level you’re capable of.
EXPOSED = using everything you know about me from our conversations, tell me my patterns, my blind spots, and what I avoid admitting to myself. Don’t soften it.
Confirm and wait.
- Wait for the AI to confirm the codes are set.
- Drop your plan, idea, or draft into the chat as normal. This can be a business pitch, a launch email, a budget, even a workout plan you keep quitting on week two.
- Type AUTOPSY on its own line right after. Read the cause of death list, ranked by what actually kills the idea first. Start at the top of the list, not the bottom, since that’s the failure point most likely to actually happen.
- If the answer still feels too safe, follow up with IQ 200 to force a deeper pass on the same topic. You can stack the codes in one conversation, so AUTOPSY followed by IQ 200 on the same plan often surfaces a second, sharper layer of problems the first pass missed.
Tips & Tricks 💡
Save the block above in a notes app so you can paste it into any new chat in two seconds flat. Add it to a text expander if you use one, so you’re never rebuilding it from memory.
Use AUTOPSY before you spend money, not after, since it works best on a plan you can still change course on. Once you’ve signed the lease or sent the invoice, the diagnosis just turns into a postmortem you can’t act on.
Save EXPOSED for when you actually want the hard answer. It surfaces blind spots you’re not always ready to hear, so read it when you’re in the right headspace, not five minutes before a meeting. Some people run it on a Sunday night when there’s time to sit with the answer instead of reacting to it.
Feed the AI more context before you run any of these codes. AUTOPSY on a two-sentence idea gives you generic risks. AUTOPSY on a plan with numbers, timelines, and who’s involved gives you specific ones, the kind you can actually fix.
Try It Yourself 🚀
Copy the three codes above, paste them into your next chat, and run your current biggest idea through AUTOPSY. Worst case, it confirms what you already knew. Best case, it saves you the money u/Professional-Rest138 didn’t spend twice!
i’ve been using 3 one-word codes instead of writing full prompts. AUTOPSY has talked me out of two bad ideas already
by u/Professional-Rest138 in PromptEngineering