I am a strategic person. I love order, patterns, systems that work. Things that are logical and make sense. That’s exactly why I’m fascinated by artificial intelligence (AI) – and at the same time it sometimes drives me crazy.
Because no matter how carefully I build a prompt, with all the rules and methods, sometimes the end result is something that is neither logical nor useful. That is frustrating – and it is precisely in this area of tension, between strategy and chaos, that I see the real power of working with AI.
KLARO: Structure that provides security
With Julia Junge’sKLARO method (context, guideline, task & goal, role, output), I have a framework that helps me to formulate prompts clearly and comprehensibly. KLARO gives me stability, saves correction loops and ensures that I get in the right direction on the first attempt.
This is worth its weight in gold, especially in a team. Because when several people are working with AI, it is important that prompts are comprehensible. KLARO creates exactly that – a common vocabulary with which we can ensure quality.
But as much as I love KLARO, I also know that methods are not dogmas. Sometimes it’s just right to deliberately break KLARO. Only define the output, without much context. Leave out the role to provoke surprises. Or send the AI into creative chaos and see where it leads.
5 mistakes that surprised me when prompting
On this path – somewhere between structure and chaos – I also made my mistakes. Not the classic ones that everyone already knows (“too imprecise, too long, no goal”), but rather the ones that you only notice when you’ve been working with AI for a while. Maybe you’ll recognize yourself.
1. remain trapped in your own pattern
I often find myself stuck in my own way of thinking – and so does the AI. Only when I consciously force it to change roles (“Answer like a teenager” or “Analyze this as a funding provider”) do answers emerge that really surprise me. However, the big challenge in the work context is to come up with unusual perspectives.
2. throwing in too much at once (the CoPilot trap)
Especially with tools like Copilot, you quickly realize that AI doesn’t always separate the important from the unimportant. If I pour everything in, I often end up with a hodgepodge. The real quality comes when I select in advance and only provide the relevant information. As with so many things, good preparation of the work materials is half the battle.
3. prompting like Google
For a long time, I was tempted to treat AI like a search engine: short, vague questions, get an answer quickly. But that way I keep the AI artificially small. Only when I really give it context and enter into a dialog does it really come into its own. For me, the absolute game changer is the dictation function. I’d much rather talk than type everything in.
4. forget feedback loops
One prompt, one reply – and then what? That was my initial mistake. Today, I plan almost every prompt as a dialog: Check results, refocus, check again. AI only becomes really strong in ping-pong. I either give critical feedback or the AI from the perspective of my target group – MEGA!
5. take methods too rigidly
Yes, I am a strategy person – and at the same time I have learned that it is fatal to follow methods too slavishly. KLARO gives me stability, but the most exciting ideas often arise when I simply leave out individual elements or combine them in a completely new way.
Ensuring quality – despite chaos
Sounds nice, this interplay between order and disorder. But how do you stay reliable – especially in a team? The following applies to us:
- Transparency: Everyone writes their prompts in such a way that others can understand them.
- Review loops: Results are reviewed together – what works, what doesn’t.
- Experimentation mode vs. production mode: We make a clear distinction between trial and error and working on reliable results.
This leaves enough room for creative chaos without compromising on quality.
Conclusion: finding the balance
For me, prompting means finding a balance: between my love of order and strategy – and the courage to jump into chaos.
The KLARO method gives me security, but AI surprises me again and again when I let go of the structures. It’s precisely this mix that makes working with AI so exciting.
Invitation: PromptGuide 2.0
This is exactly why we have developed the PromptGuide 2.0. It provides you with the most important start prompt structures with KLARO, an overview of simple and unusual prompting strategies – and encourages you not only to use them, but also to break them.
