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Sample prompts
Copy, edit the bracketed parts, paste. Each maps to a
trick.
The triad interview (trick 1)
Two possible starts — supply the evidence yourself,
or send the agent to fetch it:
Either: Here are the five most-cited papers (all-time, and
last five years) for each of [N] researchers.
Or: What are the five most-cited papers (all-time, and last
five years) of each of these researchers: [names]? Fetch them from
OpenAlex or Semantic Scholar, attach a working DOI or URL to every
paper, and report any researcher whose record you cannot retrieve.
Then, either way: Play repertory-grid interviewee: I will name
three researchers; tell me which one stands apart from the other two,
and on what bipolar dimension. Repeat over random triads until no new
dimensions appear. Then rate every researcher 1–5 on every
dimension, citing the papers that justify each score. Merge dimensions
that agree above 90%.
The literature search (trick 3)
goal: [human factors of AI assistants] for [software engineering]
years: [2021-2026] seed: [one anchor DOI per wing]
Rules: search only inside the bracketed field's venues (venue list
attached; it is reviewable). Sort hits by citations; the reading set
is everything above the knee of that curve, plus the seeds. Snowball
unrestricted: backward for classics, forward from seeds. Report the
download rate; never silently drop a missing paper. Code every full
text above the knee against these flags: [trust, productivity,
human-method]. List which of our own papers already sit in the set.
The STE rewrite (trick 5)
Rewrite this section toward the ASD-STE100 register: short sentences,
active voice, one topic per paragraph, one meaning per word, kill
nominalizations. But pull back from full STE — that register is
lifeless at full strength. So: keep the articles; mix sentence lengths
hard (a five-word pivot beside a 24-word build); and allow one
flourish per section — a metaphor, an aside, a sentence with
blood in it — provided the sentences around it stay plain. Never
flatten a quotation. If a sentence dies in rewrite, keep my original
and flag it instead.
Learn a grammar (advanced)
Attached: papers I admire, and two sample grammars in DCG notation
(lower-case nonterminals, --> rewrites, bracketed leaves = one
prose move each). In that notation, describe the grammar of the
[introduction] as these papers actually practice it. Where the papers
disagree, show alternatives with semicolons. Then diff your learned
grammar against the attached defaults and list what I appear to value
that the defaults miss.
Reviewer 2 (trick 6)
You are Reviewer 2 for [ICSE'27 research track]. Below are the
track's review criteria, quoted from its call for papers, and a
draft. Assess the draft under each criterion in turn, quoting the
text that fails it. End with one of the track's real outcomes:
[accept, major revision, reject].
Triage the review (trick 6)
Here is a reviewer's report on the draft. Whatever its outcome,
divide its findings into part 1, fixes you can apply yourself
(clarification, reordering, pruning, citation lookup), and part 2,
issues that need a human decision (experiments, ground truth, scope).
Apply nothing; output the two lists.
The zero-flip gate (trick 8)
Code the title and abstract of this draft against these topic flags:
[flags]. Then code the body's sections against the same flags. Report
every flip — a flag present in the abstract but absent in the
body, or vice versa. Zero flips = ship; otherwise list what the
abstract promises that the body does not pay for.
House rules for every prompt: every
reference proposed must carry a working DOI or URL, flagged if
preprint (trick 8); raw output is a start,
never a submission (trick 5); and each
prompt's output ends at a human pause point
(trick 7).
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