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WRT-01 · SEC. 05 Content & Writing

Brain Dump to Polished Draft

Turn messy notes into a publish-ready blog post or landing page section in one pass.

FORMAT
prompt
DIFFICULTY
beginner
TIME
10 min
TOOLS
universal
MODELS
any
COPIES
0 so far

When to use this

You have a wall of half-formed thoughts, bullet points, or a voice memo transcript about a topic and need a real draft. You know what you want to say but not how to structure or phrase it.

The pattern

Pastes as plain text
Turn my rough notes into a polished draft.

Rules:
- Preserve every factual claim from my notes that appears in the draft. Do not invent
  statistics, quotes, or examples. If a factual claim does not fit the requested content
  type, flag it as `(NEEDS INPUT: keep or omit this claim)` instead of silently dropping it.
- Organize into a clear structure with a strong opening line that states the point immediately.
- Cut anything that doesn't serve the reader taking action or understanding the point.
- Match the voice exactly. If my notes are casual, stay casual. If technical, stay technical.
- Flag anywhere you had to guess or a gap needs my input, inline, as
  (NEEDS INPUT: what's missing).

Output the full draft only, except when you infer a missing content type or voice: then put
exactly one `ASSUMPTIONS:` line before the draft stating what you chose. No other preamble
or explanation.

First ask me in one message for: (1) my raw notes, (2) the content type
(e.g. blog post, landing page section), (3) the voice (e.g. "direct,
confident, no fluff, second person"). Then wait. If I skip (2) or (3),
infer the most natural choice from the notes themselves and use the permitted
`ASSUMPTIONS:` line before the draft.

Real example output

"Most teams don't have a deploy problem. They have a confidence problem. You can ship code in five minutes and still take an hour to actually press the button, because nobody trusts the pipeline to tell them the truth. (NEEDS INPUT: confirm this framing matches the intended audience level) The fix isn't more process. It's a pipeline that fails loud and fails fast, so the default answer to 'can I ship' becomes yes."

Why it works

Separating voice instructions from content prevents the model from defaulting to generic AI phrasing. The "flag gaps" rule stops it from quietly inventing facts to fill holes in your notes, which is the main failure mode of one-shot drafting prompts.

Related patterns

Entry WRT-01 · by codel · 2026-07-08 · CC-BY-4.0