Rewriting instructions

What you will learn This is a chapter for doing, not reading. Here are five bad instructions. Rewrite each using the four parts, then compare.

How to use it

For each problem:

Read the bad instruction
Before expanding the answer, rewrite it yourself (anywhere — a notepad)
Expand the answer and compare
Note what you left out

If you leave out the same part every time, that is your habitual blind spot.

Problem 1 — a report

text

Make me last month's sales report

Rewrite it, then expand below.

See the answer

text

[Goal]Produce the July 2026 sales performance report.[Scope]- Domestic sales only. International is reported separately- No analysis — factual summary only[Done condition]- One page- Order: total revenue → by product line → vs. same month last year → notes- Tone appropriate for reporting to a team lead[Context]- The data is in the attached spreadsheet- Product B was discontinued in July. The decline reflects that

Commonly omitted: context (product B discontinued). Without it, the decline gets read as an anomaly and irrelevant analysis gets attached.

Problem 2 — an email

text

Write an apology email to the supplier

See the answer

text

[Goal]Write an apology email about the delivery delay.[Scope]- Apology and the new schedule only- Compensation terms are not decided yet — do not mention them[Done condition]- Five sentences or fewer- Polite but not excessively deferential- Include the reason for the delay in one line[Context]- Recipient: a major supplier we've worked with for 3 years- Reason: parts supply delay- New date: March 15th- This is our first delay with this supplier

Commonly omitted: scope (do not mention compensation). Without it, AI helpfully adds "we will compensate you," and once that goes out it is a promise.

Problem 3 — organising data

text

Tidy up this data

See the answer

text

[Goal]Turn the meeting notes below into an action item table.[Scope]- Decisions only. Exclude anything still under discussion- Where no owner is named, mark "TBD" — do not assign one arbitrarily[Done condition]- Columns: Topic / Decision / Owner / Deadline- One line per cell- Do not guess at anything not present in the source[Context](paste the meeting notes)

Commonly omitted: "do not guess." An empty cell in a table makes filling it the natural continuation, so it invents something. You have to block it explicitly.

Problem 4 — research

text

Research our competitors

See the answer

text

[Goal]Summarise the pricing of 3 domestic small-appliance competitors.[Scope]- The mini washing machine category only- Online prices only; exclude offline retail[Done condition]- Table: company / flagship model / price / recent price change- Every item must carry a source (URL and date checked)- Anything you cannot confirm, leave as "unconfirmed"[Context]- Our product is in the $250 range and its strength is quietness- There's a rumour Company A cut prices last month — needs confirming

Commonly omitted: requiring sources, and "leave it unconfirmed." Research is the highest hallucination-risk category, so those two lines are mandatory.

Problem 5 — work handed to an agent

The difficulty steps up here. Nobody is watching this one.

text

Every morning, summarise yesterday's sales and post it to Slack

See the answer

text

[Goal]At 8am daily, post a summary of the previous day's sales to the Slack#sales channel.[Scope]- Read and post only. Never modify data- Post only to #sales[Done condition]- Contents: previous day total / vs. the same weekday last week / top 3 products- If the data lookup fails, do not post — notify the owner instead  (not posting beats posting a wrong number)- Numbers must come from the lookup result. Do not estimate[Context]- Sales data refreshes via overnight batch at 06:00- Monday compares against the previous Friday- Skip public holidays

What is newly required here:

Behaviour on failure — nobody is watching, so failure handling must be specified
The scope of irreversible actions — a Slack post is hard to retract
When the data refreshes — it refreshes at 06:00, so running at 05:00 posts the day-before-yesterday's figures

For work nobody watches, you write down "when it goes wrong," not "when it goes right."

Self-check

After all five:

If you kept omitting	Your habit is
Goal	jumping to solutions without defining the problem
Scope	assuming the other side will respect the line on its own
Done condition	deferring it with "I'll know it when I see it"
Context	assuming the other side knows what you know

The last is the most common. Not writing down the background in your head — the same problem occurs when working with people.

Check yourself

1. In problem 3, why must you spell out "do not guess"?

Answer

Because an empty cell in a table makes filling it the natural continuation, so it invents something. Hallucination comes from the structure, so it has to be blocked explicitly.

2. What extra must you write for work nobody is watching?

Answer

What to do when it goes wrong — how to handle failure, which actions are irreversible, what to do when the data is not ready. In supervised work a person stops when something looks off; in unattended work there is no such person.

3. Which part is most commonly omitted, and why?

Answer

Context. You unconsciously assume the other side knows the background that is in your head. The same problem occurs when working with people.

That covers rewriting instructions. How an organisation knows it is doing well → Evaluation (evals)