Why these five slots work
An AI assistant can only use what you give it. When a prompt leaves out the audience, the format or the limits, the model has to guess, and guesses are where vague or off-target answers come from. The five slots cover the things people most often forget.
Role
A role sets the point of view and level of detail. “A careful editor” gets you different habits than “a friendly tutor”.
Task
Use one clear verb: rewrite, compare, summarise, list. If you have two jobs, send two prompts or number them.
Context
Paste the material to work on and say who the answer is for. This is usually the slot that improves results most.
Format
Say whether you want a table, bullets, steps or a short paragraph. Otherwise you get whatever the model prefers.
Limits
Word counts, tone, spelling style and a list of things to avoid keep the answer inside the lines.
Before and after
Before
Make this better.
After
You are a careful editor for a UK small-business blog. Rewrite the paragraph below so it is clearer and about 30% shorter. Readers are shop owners with no technical background. Give the rewritten paragraph, then three bullets listing the biggest changes. Use British English, avoid jargon and keep every fact.
The second version is longer, but it removes every decision the model would otherwise make for you.
Check the answer, not just the prompt
A good prompt improves your odds; it does not guarantee accuracy. AI assistants can state wrong things confidently, so check names, numbers, quotes and legal or medical claims against a reliable source before you rely on them. Ask for the reasoning or sources if that helps, and then verify those too.
Keep private data out of your prompts unless you know how the service handles it. Names, passwords, client details and anything under an NDA are better left out or replaced with placeholders.
Keep going
If you want a longer walkthrough of a simple framework for getting better results from AI tools, aitopic has an article on an AI prompt framework for better results. Try your prompt, read the answer critically, then change one slot at a time to see what moves the result.