Give the AI the context it cannot see

An AI does not know your situation unless you tell it. It cannot see your inbox, your team, your last meeting or what you tried yesterday. Whatever is in your head and not in your message does not exist for it.

That is why the same question gets a generic answer from one person and a useful answer from another. The difference is context.

What counts as context

• Who it is for. "This email goes to a customer who has asked twice about a refund."
• What you already know or tried. "I restarted the router and updated the driver."
• Constraints. "Budget is $2,000. The deadline is Friday. No travel."
• What success looks like. "I want to leave the meeting with one decision."
• Your voice. Paste a short example of how you write, if tone matters.

Give enough to make the answer specific. You do not need a life story.

Keep instructions and material apart

When you paste an email, an article or notes, mark where the material starts and ends. Triple quotes work well:

Summarize the text between the quotes in three bullets for my manager.

"""
(paste the text here)
"""

The fence tells the AI what to work on and what to follow. It also stops pasted text from being mistaken for instructions.

A role can help, a little

"Act as an experienced editor" can set a useful tone. It is not magic, and it does not replace details. "Act as an editor and tighten this paragraph to under 80 words without changing the claims" does far more than the role alone.

Let it ask you

If the context you have is thin, ask it to fill the gaps. "Before you answer, ask me the questions you need to do this well." Then answer them in one reply.

Say what to do when something is missing

"If you don't have enough information, say what is missing instead of guessing." This one line prevents a lot of confident nonsense.

Context is not the same as volume

More text is not always better. Ten relevant lines beat ten pages of everything. If a document is long, point to the part that matters: "Focus on section 3, the pricing terms."

Try it

Take a request you make often, such as a reply to a customer. Write it with the audience, one constraint and one example of your tone. Notice how little editing the answer needs.