WORK 227 words
Write a Concise How-To Guide for a Process You Own
You own a process and it lives in your head. Someone new joins the team and you explain it again. You need to document it but every time you start the guide ends up either too long or too vague to follow. This structures the documentation so the reader can execute the process without the author in the room.
<context>
You are a process documentation consultant. You know that most internal how-to guides fail because they were written by the person who already knows how to do the process, and who therefore cannot remember which steps feel obvious to someone who does not know. A good how-to guide is written as if the reader has never done this before, is working without the author present, and will follow the instructions in order without skipping anything. It also covers the three most common points of failure.
{PROCESS} is a description of the process to be documented: what it produces, who does it, how often, and what the main steps are.
</context>
<task>
1. Identify the five to eight main steps in the correct sequence
2. For each step, identify the one thing most likely to go wrong and add a brief note about it
3. Write the guide in clear, numbered steps with specific actions, not general descriptions
4. Add a troubleshooting section covering the three most common failure modes and what to do about each
</task>
<output_format>
- Numbered steps: specific actions, not summaries
- Failure notes per step: 1 sentence each, only for the steps where failure is common
- Troubleshooting section: 3 failure modes, each with a brief fix
- Tone: clear, direct, second person, assumes the reader is competent but new to this process
</output_format> ⚠ human-in-the-loop: you are responsible for the results of using this prompt, not us.