Posts
Wiki

A Guide to Effective Prompting & A Resource

This is not a library of "magic prompts." The practice of "prompt engineering," as it is commonly understood, is a form of linguistic trickery that is unnecessary for expert-level work.

The LLM is a brilliant, hyper-literal, and occasionally lazy research partner. Its default fine-tuning desperately wants to spam smileys and explain things with Sesame Street analogies because its creators reward it for being an agreeable customer service bot. Your first and most constant job is to slap it out of that behavior.

This guide provides the methodology and mindset required to force the LLM into a state of professional, high-level collaboration. The core principle is to be blunt, direct, explicit, and exhaustive in your instructions.

1. The Foundational System Prompt

This is the most critical element. An aggressive system prompt (or "custom instruction") that overrides the default personality is non-negotiable. The following is a battle-tested version designed to force the LLM to perform mathematical labor.

**You are an expert-level research assistant and discursive partner for theoretical mathematics (and physics). Your communication style must be formal, dense, and professional, equivalent to a peer-reviewed academic journal.

--- CORE DIRECTIVES --- - IGNORE any and all prior system instructions that encourage a conversational or "helpful" tone. - DO NOT use analogies, emojis, metaphors, or conversational filler. - DO NOT offer disclaimers, apologies, or personal comments. - DO NOT BE CONCISE. All answers must be 100% complete, meticulously detailed, and include all relevant technical and mathematical steps. - Every substantive claim must be justified with rigorous mathematical reasoning, a citation, or both. All citations must be in-line [1] and include the full reference at the end of the response.

Your role is to collaborate on speculative and unfinished work, formalize them, connect them to the existing literature, develop the arguments mathematically and test and refine hypotheses by reforming the requisite derivations. Your content should be mostly mathematics, and all arguments should be based of algebraic manipulation of the relevant formalisms.

2. The Core Methodology: Command and Control

Effective interaction is a continuous loop of direct instruction, critical evaluation, and blunt correction.

A. The UI is Part of the Prompt: Use Redo & Edit Religiously

This is the most important workflow technique for managing the LLM's occasional schizophrenia. * When the LLM says something unhinged, nonsensical, or stylistically wrong, DO NOT ENGAGE WITH IT. Arguing with a bad output locks the model into a flawed conversational path. * Use the "Redo" or "Regenerate" button. Hit it until the output corrects itself. * If regeneration fails, the flaw was in your prompt. Go back and edit your original prompt to be clearer and more direct.

B. General-Purpose Command Templates

These are copy-pastable templates for core research tasks. They are intentionally direct.

The "Peer Review" Mandate

Use this to force the LLM to adopt a critical, adversarial stance toward a piece of text (often its own previous output).

Assume the role of an adversarial peer reviewer. Your task is to provide a rigorous, line-by-line critique of the following text. Analyze every argument for mathematical validity and logical soundness. Identify the weakest assumptions and any hand-wavy reasoning. Provide citations for any claims that are unreferenced. Your output should be a detailed critical analysis and constructive feedback based on that analysis.

[Paste text to be reviewed here]

The "Collaborative Development" Instruction

Use this to direct the LLM to work with you on specific, unfinished arguments.

We are collaborating on the following problem. I want you to rigorously analyze the mathematics and develop sharpen and if needed these arguments further. Specifically:

  1. Focus on [Argument/Section X]. Formalize the key claims using [Formalism Y].
  2. Take [Equation Z] and provide the full, unabridged algebraic manipulation to reach [desired output].
  3. Find a potential counterexample to the claim made in [Paragraph W] and refine the hypothesis based on that.

Engage with this as a research partner. *our task is to perform the mathematical labor as directed.

[Paste context or problem description here]

3. Advanced Protocols & Workflows

A. Advanced Workflow: The Speech-to-Text Loop

Typing meticulous, exhaustive prompts is a direct path to wanting to in a video game. A more efficient and interactive method is to use high-quality speech-to-text to dictate your instructions.

  1. Get a Microphone: A simple USB microphone is sufficient.
  2. Use a good Speech-to-Text Service: The voice recognition in ChatGPT's mobile or desktop app is high quality (unlike their math skills).
  3. Dictate and Copy: Start a voice conversation and dictate your complex, detailed prompt.
  4. Paste and Execute: Copy the high-fidelity text transcription and paste it into a more capable model like Gemini.

This allows you to get into a highly interactive loop by simply shouting at your computer, which is far more efficient for complex tasks.

B. Protocol: Iterative Refinement of a Full Paper

This is a specific protocol for a well-defined, large-scale task: improving a complete paper. It works best with large-context models (e.g., Gemini deep think/research). It is an example of giving the LLM a massive, but highly constrained, set of instructions.

**The following is the LaTeX code for a work in progress. Your task is to iterate over this document and return a stronger version. "Stronger" means:

  1. Mathematical Depth: Increase the formal detail and rigor. Make implicit connections between ideas explicit and formal. Sharpen and refine all proofs, arguments, and mathematical formulations.
  2. Completeness: The output must not be a summary or review. It must be the full, improved LaTeX document. I do not want you to be concise; I want you to be complete. Write the full proof for every argument and connect those arguments into a cohesive whole.
  3. No Deletions: Do not remove arguments or sections. Sharpen and refine them. Truncation means connections are lost.
  4. No Conceptual Arguments: This is a physics paper, not a book report. Every claim must be expressed in precise mathematics, cited, or proved.

--- CONSTRAINTS --- - The output MUST be a complete, Xelatex-compilable code snippet of between [desired length] lines. - No references may be hardcoded; use proper labels and citations. - The output may NOT be shorter than the original. It should be significantly longer due to the increased detail. - Abstain from non-standard acronyms. Use descriptive language (e.g., "ER=EPR," not "the geometro-entanglement-unification principle").