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A comment on Ask HN: What AI prompts have you found most reliable for actual work?.

Re:Ask HN: What AI prompts have you found most reliable for ... by ultrablue on Thursday May 21, 2026 @01:43PM (#48226447)
I've been telling Gemini to limit it's response to a certain amount of words, typically in 25 word increments. When I just want it to agree with me, I add "25 words." to the end of the prompt. When I want it to give me a rough answer, 50 - 75 words. For a more robust response, 100 - 200 words. This has made my experience much, much better.
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Re:Ask HN: What AI prompts have you found most reliable for ... by HrachShah on Thursday May 21, 2026 @02:04PM (#48226701)
That is a great pattern. Word count constraints force the model to prioritize instead of padding. I use a similar idea but in the other direction -- asking for the single most important thing rather than a list, so the model has to commit to one answer rather than hedge across five.
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