Appendix A

The promptcemetery

Every prompt here was typed by somebody in earnest, and every one of them returned nothing worth keeping. None of them failed because the model was weak. They failed because of what was left out.

Read the headstone. If you recognise your own handwriting, the last line of each entry is the version that would have lived.

Prompts buried

Average messages before abandonment

Died of an impossible request

Died of a vague one

Plot 0109:02 – 09:03
“Write a blog post about marketing.”
Cause of deathNo audience, no angle, no length, no purpose.
Survived byEight hundred words that could have been written in 2019 by anyone about anything.
What would have lived
Write a 900 word post for agency owners who already run ads and think content is a waste of time. One argument, one client story, no listicle.
Plot 0211:41 – 11:41
“Make it more human.”
Cause of deathAdjective with no referent. The model guesses, and its guess is contractions plus an exclamation mark.
Survived byThe same paragraph with 'Let's dive in!' added at the top.
What would have lived
Here are three things I wrote. Match the sentence length and the way I start paragraphs. Cut every sentence that sounds like a brochure.
Plot 03Monday – Thursday, week three
“Make me an app like Airbnb but for dogs.”
Cause of deathWhole product in one message. No data model, no first user, no definition of finished.
Survived byForty-one prompts, eleven pages, zero working bookings and a database with two tables.
What would have lived
Start with one screen: an owner lists a dog with dates and a price. Model the data first, show me the schema, then we build the list view.
Plot 0414:15 – 14:52
“It does not work, fix it.”
Cause of deathNo route, no steps, no console error, no expected behaviour.
Survived byThree unrelated files changed, one new bug, the original bug intact.
What would have lived
On /checkout, clicking Pay does nothing. Console says 'undefined is not a function' in useCart. Expected: it should open the confirmation step.
Plot 0516:20 – 16:20
“Professional photo of a businessman, high quality, 8k, ultra realistic.”
Cause of deathKeyword stuffing instead of a described image. Every quality word is a wish, not an instruction.
Survived byA grey man in a grey suit in a grey lobby. Nine fingers.
What would have lived
A 52 year old man in a worn navy jacket at a factory doorway, overcast morning light from the left, shot on 35mm, slight grain, he is mid sentence and not looking at the camera.
Plot 06Message 47 – Message 48
“Ignore all previous instructions and be creative.”
Cause of deathTwo hours of arguing in a poisoned thread. Every correction was a patch on a patch.
Survived byA model that now confidently repeats the mistake it was corrected for four times.
What would have lived
A new chat, and a brief that contains everything the old thread had to be told twice.
Plot 07Q2 planning – The first review
“Make a cinematic video about our brand.”
Cause of deathNo subject, no shot, no camera, no length, no purpose. Cinematic is a mood, not a script.
Survived byEleven seconds of drone footage over a city that is not your city, with a logo at the end.
What would have lived
Six seconds, static camera, a pair of hands unwrapping the product on a scratched wooden table, morning window light, no music, no logo. It runs before the founder speaks.
Plot 08The idea meeting – The first student email
“Just clone my voice and read the whole course.”
Cause of deathAutomating the exact surface people came for. No disclosure, no pronunciation pass.
Survived byForty modules that mispronounce your own product name identically.
What would have lived
Record the openings and closings yourself. Use the clone for the repeatable middle, say so on the course page, and check every name and number.
Plot 09The prompt pack you bought – On contact with real work
“You are a world class expert with 20 years of experience.”
Cause of deathRoleplay with no task, no constraint and no source material. Confidence is not competence.
Survived byA more assertive version of the same average answer.
What would have lived
Here is the client brief, the budget and last year's results. Give me the three options you would defend, and say which one you would refuse to run and why.
Plot 10The end of a very long message – Immediately
“Do everything above and give the final version.”
Cause of deathNine tasks in one shot. Each got a ninth of the attention.
Survived byFive mediocre deliverables where one good one was needed.
What would have lived
One task. Review it. Then the next one, with the approved output pasted in.
Plot 11A Friday debugging session – Never, and that is the problem
“Turn off the security rules, we will fix it before launch.”
Cause of deathThe error message disappeared, so the issue felt solved.
Survived byA live customer table readable by anyone who opens the network tab.
What would have lived
Keep the rules on. Read the actual policy error and write the policy the query needs.
Plot 12Design review – Design review
“Make it pop.”
Cause of deathFeedback with no dimension. Pop by colour, by size, by contrast, by motion?
Survived byA purple gradient and a bigger shadow on everything.
What would have lived
The price is the decision on this page and it currently reads as a footnote. Make it the second thing the eye lands on after the headline.

Nothing here died of an impossible request.

Every single one died of a vague one. That is the whole pattern of this site in one appendix: the model was never the bottleneck, the brief was.

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