Thanks for giving up your lunch break! Redo your case tonight and send me what came out. I'm curious.
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The 4 boxes and the 5 other frameworks on the front, the 3 CRAFT cases and the 3 habits on the back.
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Remember these 4 pillars
- Spend your effort on context.
- Let the model ask before it answers.
- Treat the first version as a draft.
- If it matters, verify it against the source.
Fill in 4 boxes
Context
Who you are, the situation, what's already been said, and what a good result looks like for you. Aim for at least 5 lines; if it fits in one, you haven't given enough.
Role
Who it answers as. This sets the register and the vocabulary; calling it an expert doesn't make it any smarter.
Objective
What you want out, in what format, how long, and who will read it.
Limits
What you refuse, and what replaces it. A ban on its own leaves the model guessing: "write in flowing paragraphs" works better than "no bullet points".
The 4 boxes don't carry the same weight: context does most of the work, and the other 3 mostly fine-tune the result.
Keep these 3 prompts
I want you to help me write [task]. Before you write anything, ask me the 5 most important questions you need answered to do this well. Ask them one at a time.
Base your answer only on the document I gave you. For each claim, quote the exact sentence from the source. Tell me what you are not sure about. If the answer is not in the document, say so.
I need to accomplish [goal]. Write me the best possible prompt to give to an AI for this. Ask me any clarifying questions first.
You'll meet 5 other frameworks
We used 4 boxes in the room because 4 still fit in your head a week later. Look the subject up and these are the ones you'll run into. They say roughly the same thing in a different order, and using any one of them already puts you well ahead of writing prompts with none.
COSTAR6 boxes
Context, Objective, Style, Tone, Audience, Response format. It's the most complete and the slowest to fill in, and worth it when the output has to land in a specific voice for a specific reader.
CRAFT5 boxes
Context, Role, Action, Format, Tone. You'll see it most on the marketing side. At least 3 different versions circulate, so check which one an article means before you follow it.
Filling in CRAFT for a real case
Each box gets one line. Pick one of the 3 cases from the workshop.
- C · Context
- Our team of 4 built a prototype at the Makers Lab: a lamp that dims after an hour of phone use. We need 20 students to test it next week.
- R · Role
- You are the community manager of a student start-up.
- A · Action
- Write a LinkedIn post that recruits our 20 testers.
- F · Format
- Keep it under 120 words, open with a line that makes people stop scrolling, and end with one link.
- T · Tone
- Sound curious and plain, with no wall of hashtags.
- C · Context
- Our student association runs a networking evening for 80 people on 20 November. We have no budget for drinks.
- R · Role
- You are the partnerships manager of a student association.
- A · Action
- Write an email asking the café across from campus to sponsor the drinks.
- F · Format
- Write 6 lines at most, with a subject line and one clear ask with a date.
- T · Tone
- Sound friendly and businesslike, as if you were a regular customer.
- C · Context
- I am a marketing apprentice in a 40-person cosmetics company. We post on Instagram 3 times a week and nobody checks what works.
- R · Role
- You are a marketing manager who has coached many apprentices.
- A · Action
- Write the email in which I offer my manager a one-page monthly report on our posts.
- F · Format
- Keep it under 150 words, with a subject line.
- T · Tone
- Sound confident without overselling, like a junior who has done the homework.
Our 4 boxes hold the same content: Action and Format go into Objective, and Tone goes into Role, which sets the register. CRAFT has nowhere to say what you refuse, so we add a Limits box.
RISEN5 boxes
Role, Instructions, Steps, End goal, Narrowing. It's the only one of the 5 that asks you for the steps, which makes it good for anything procedural.
RTF3 boxes
Role, Task, Format. It drops context and tone on purpose, to go fast. That's fine for a quick, well-shaped answer, but it runs thin as soon as the answer depends on your situation.
TAG3 boxes
Task, Action, Goal. Where RTF assigns a role, TAG focuses on intent and outcome. It's the fastest to memorise, and a decent default if you remember nothing else.
None of them has a Limits box, which is why ours does. Saying what you refuse, and what should replace it, is the cheapest improvement you can make to a prompt.
Watch out for confident mistakes
That confidence hits hardest on the subjects you know least, which are the ones you asked about: you asked because you didn't know. Quotes, references and precise statistics are where it invents most convincingly. Give it a source document and a Ctrl+F is enough to check.
3 habits for using AI ethically as a student
emlyon has an AI charter, and each professor sets the rules for their course. Those come first.
Think first
Write your own first take, then ask the model to challenge it. If it does the thinking, you do not learn anything.
Say how you used it
Note which tool you used, for what, and with which prompt. Some courses already ask for it in group projects.
Keep data out
Do not paste personal data, documents from your company or a classmate's work into a tool you do not control.
If you are on a work-study contract, your company's IT policy decides which tools you may use there.
Try it again tonight on a real case
Take the case you worked on today and run it again from scratch: fill in the 4 boxes, let it ask you 5 questions, then read the first version as a draft. Give it 20 minutes on something that matters to you. The workshop can't do that part for you.