TL;DR: This four-step prompt forces AI to surface your blind spots before it answers. Generic out, specific in.
Most people use AI like a search engine. Ask question, get answer, move on.
The problem: the AI doesn’t know what it doesn’t know about your situation. So it gives you a generic answer for a generic person with a generic problem.
That’s not you.
Ask ChatGPT “how should I price my SaaS?” and you’ll get a paragraph about value-based pricing, competitor analysis, and willingness to pay. Technically correct. Completely useless without knowing your market, your customer acquisition cost, your churn rate, and whether you’re trying to win on price or on positioning.
The AI has no idea which one applies to you. So it covers all of them. You walk away with advice that sounds smart but fits no one.
What This Prompt Does
A prompt floating around Reddit right now flips the order. Instead of jumping to an answer, you get a pre-flight check first.
Before the AI responds, it has to:
- Identify assumptions you’re making that you haven’t stated out loud
- Tell you what information would change its answer if it had it
- Name the most common mistake people make when asking this type of question
- Ask you one question that makes the answer useful for your specific situation
Then and only then does it respond.
Step 1 is about unstated context. You know your situation inside and out, which means you forget to mention the parts that feel obvious to you. The AI surfaces those gaps before they distort the output.
Step 2 is about missing data. Sometimes you’re asking without realizing you’re missing a key variable. Knowing what the AI needs lets you either provide it or understand why the answer will be limited without it.
Step 4 is the one most people undervalue. One targeted question almost always produces a more useful answer than the most detailed prompt you’d write yourself. It forces you to clarify your actual situation, not just the surface version of it.
Why It Works
Step 3 is where it gets interesting. The AI pulls from patterns across thousands of similar questions. It knows where people go wrong before they know it themselves.
Most prompts skip this entirely. You ask, it answers, you miss the thing you didn’t know to ask about.
This forces a real pause. One that changes the output.
Think about the last time you asked a genuinely smart person for advice. They didn’t just answer immediately. They asked a few questions first. They pushed back on your framing. They said “most people in your situation mess this up by doing X.” That’s what this prompt replicates.
The difference between a generic AI answer and a useful one is almost always framing. Not the model. Not the prompt length. The framing. A two-sentence answer built on the right framing beats a ten-paragraph answer that started from the wrong assumption.
Run it once and you’ll start to notice how often your original question was slightly off. Sometimes a lot off. The pre-flight check doesn’t just improve the answer. It improves the question.
🎯 Use Cases
- Business decisions: pricing, hiring, positioning, anywhere a wrong assumption costs you real money
- Content strategy and creative direction: especially when you’re too close to your own work to see what’s missing
- Evaluating a new idea before committing to it: the “common mistake” step is particularly brutal and useful here
- Any problem where the wrong framing costs you time or sends you in the wrong direction entirely
Prompt of the Day
Don’t answer my question yet. First do this:
- Tell me what assumptions I’m making that I haven’t stated out loud
- Tell me what information would significantly change your answer if you had it
- Tell me the most common mistake people make when asking you this type of question
- Ask me the one question that would make your answer actually useful for my specific situation rather than anyone who might ask this
Only after I answer, give me the output.
My question: [paste your question here]
Copy it. Save it. Run it the next time you’re about to paste something important into ChatGPT.
Step 3 will catch something you didn’t know you were missing. Nearly every time.
And after you answer the one question in Step 4, notice how much more specific the response becomes. You’re not getting advice for everyone anymore. You’re getting advice for your situation, your context, your actual problem.
Cyber Corsairs covers the AI prompts, tools, and strategies that actually move the needle. Subscribe below if you want more like this, delivered weekly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can I add this to my ChatGPT custom instructions?
You could, but it might get repetitive across every conversation. Better move: save it as a template or use it selectively for the big decisions , hiring, pricing, strategy shifts. Some folks find it most valuable for high-stakes thinking rather than everyday chat.
Q: The AI gave way too much detail when I tried this. How do I tone it down?
One user had to tweak it too. Try skipping the “common mistakes” section if it feels redundant, or ask upfront to be more concise. You can also remove any step that isn’t giving you value, the core idea (identify assumptions, ask for missing info, ask the clarifying question) is what actually matters.
Q: Is this overkill for simple questions?
Yeah, probably. This shines for decisions that actually need thinking through, business strategy, hiring, creative direction. For straightforward factual questions, you’re just wasting tokens. Save it for problems where you’re genuinely uncertain what you don’t know.
This is the most useful thing I’ve found for getting ChatGPT to actually think instead of just respond
by u/Professional-Rest138 in ChatGPTPromptGenius