Lesson 3 · Beginner · 15 min
Writing a good prompt: the four ingredients
The four ingredients of a good Copilot prompt: goal, context, expectations, source. Before and after on a real case, guided exercise, quiz and proof of mastery.
- Goal
- You will be able to write a prompt that names the goal, the context, the expectations and the source, and get a usable answer on the first try.
- Skills
- Frame
A good prompt says what to do, for whom, in what situation, in what form and from what material. Microsoft calls these ingredients goal, context, expectations and source; only the goal is mandatory, but the four together avoid rewriting. Write the instruction first, give a numbered length, and put the text to process or the attached file last.
1What goes into a prompt you will not rewrite
The official guides converge. Microsoft describes a prompt in four parts: the goal (what you want to get), the context (why, for whom, in what situation), the expectations (format, length, tone) and the source (the text or file to use).
Google Workspace speaks of persona, task, context and format. Anthropic insists on the clarity and level of detail a newly arrived colleague would need. In every case, the model guesses nothing: what you do not specify, it invents or leaves out.
Ingredient The question to ask yourself Example Goal Which action verb, which result, for whom? "Summarise in five bullets for my manager" Context What must it know that it cannot guess? "She did not attend the meeting" Expectations Which format, which numbered length, which tone? "One bullet = one decision or action, 80 words in total" Source What to work on, and where in the prompt? "Report:" followed by the pasted text, last Two rules complete the ingredients. Order matters: Microsoft notes that the last parts of the prompt carry more weight, so the instruction opens and the source closes. And positive instructions work better than prohibitions: "sentences of 20 words at most" rather than "no long sentences".
Diagram "A good prompt has four ingredients"Diagram generated by AI and reviewed 2A meeting note summed up for an absent manager
A department head wants to forward the action items from a project steering committee to senior management.
Turn 1: Structured 4-ingredient prompt.
Summarise the meeting report below in five bullet points for my manager, who did not attend the committee. Each bullet begins with an action verb, lists the owner and the validated deadline. Length: 90 words in total. Report: [paste excerpt]The response is calibrated and verifiable: the five key actions stand out clearly without digression.
Turn 2: Table restructuring follow-up.
To embed the summary directly into a weekly management dashboard, the manager follows up:
Convert these five bullets into a three-column Markdown table: Priority Action, Operational Owner, Deadline. No introductory or concluding text.Copilot immediately delivers a clean grid ready to paste into OneNote or an executive brief.
What changes.
The model knows who it is writing for, what a good bullet is, how many words it has, and where its source ends. The output is usable immediately, and every row can be cross-checked against the source report.
3Turn a spoken instruction into a team email
A spoken instruction to turn into a professional internal email. The composer's "Load exercise" button prepopulates the goal with the weak starting prompt:
"Write an email to say that the meeting room is changing."
The facts to communicate (fictional company NovaTech Ltd): from 1 October, Monday team meetings move from the Thames room to the Severn room, on the second floor, because the Thames room undergoes renovation until late November. The email goes to the forty department members; for questions, contact Nadia (
[email protected]), team coordinator.Rewrite the prompt with all four ingredients, in order, to steer the model and avoid speculative guessing (arXiv:2302.02083): Action-oriented Goal, Operational Context, Specified Sources, Output Format and Bounded Length. Then run it in Copilot Chat.
Self-assessment grid: (a) all four ingredients are present; (b) no facts are fabricated in the email; (c) the subject line is under 60 characters and the body under 90 words.
4The three studies Copilot invents when you demand them
"Give me three studies proving that remote work increases productivity, with authors and year." Prompting for precise references without providing a source or requiring verification leads to fabricated citations. Copilot provides three plausible titles, but two of them do not exist.
The remedy is to enforce verifiable evidence: "Search the web for three studies published after 2020 on remote work and productivity. For each: exact title, authors, journal or organisation, link to the publisher's page, date consulted. Cite none without a verifiable link; if you find fewer than three, say so." Rule to remember: a reference without an opened link does not exist.
5Quiz
Three questions, instant feedback. Each option comes with an explanation.
6Proof of mastery
Paste your final prompt, with its four ingredients visible, and the answer you obtained in Copilot Chat.
Criteria
Going further
The Microsoft Support page on Copilot prompts, cited below, offers examples by job. The next lesson moves on to your first useful conversation: summarising, rephrasing, translating, and following up without starting over.
Frequently asked questions
Do you always need all four ingredients?
No. Microsoft states that only the goal is mandatory. But as soon as the task has an audience, a format or a source, leaving them out forces you to rewrite the answer. The four together almost always avoid the second pass.
In what order should the prompt be written?
Instruction first, context and expectations next, source last. Microsoft notes that the last parts of the prompt carry more weight: the pasted text or the attached file closes the prompt.
Is a long prompt a better prompt?
Not necessarily. A useful prompt is precise, not long. One example of the expected result is often worth more than a list of adjectives, and a numbered length is worth more than "keep it short".