Master the Art of Prompt Creation: Tailoring Summary Prompts for Optimal Results

When using an AI model like ChatGPT, the quality of your results heavily depends on the quality of the input prompts. A well-crafted prompt ensures the AI understands your needs and can generate responses that meet those needs. This is especially true when you're asking ChatGPT to summarize a text. But how can you create an effective summary prompt? Let's start from the basics and build up to a more sophisticated prompt that delivers precise and comprehensive summaries.

Starting Simple

The easiest way to get a summary from ChatGPT is to ask it straight away: "Summarize this text for me." But while this simple prompt can yield decent results, it often lacks context, leaving the AI to guess what specifically you're interested in. This could lead to omissions or focus on aspects of the text that might not be relevant to your purpose.

Adding Context and Specificity

To get a more targeted summary, we need to provide more context to the AI. This can be done by specifying the type of text, the topic, the original text, and the particular elements of interest. For instance, you might ask: "I have an article about climate change. The original text is '...'. I'm interested in the main points and implications. Please summarize this for me."

This kind of prompt provides the AI with more explicit instructions, increasing the chances of getting a summary that aligns with your needs.

The Ultimate Summary Prompt

To further optimize your results, it's essential to consider the purpose and target audience of the summary, as well as the desired length. The following template serves as the ultimate summary prompt:

"I have a piece of text that needs to be summarized. The text is a [Insert Type: e.g. article, book, report] about [Insert Topic]. The original text is [Insert Text]. The purpose of the summary is for [Insert Target Group: e.g. students, colleagues, teacher]. I'm particularly interested in [Insert Elements: e.g. main points, key findings, implications, methodology, results]. The summary should be [Insert Desired Length: e.g. brief like an abstract, medium like a review, long like a detailed synopsis], but thorough enough to fully represent the text. Please provide a well-structured and comprehensive summary."

While slightly longer, this prompt provides all the necessary context for ChatGPT to generate a summary that matches your needs accurately.

Why Specificity Matters

Knowing the target group allows the AI to tailor the language and depth of the summary to the audience's needs. Understanding the purpose helps to focus the summary on the most relevant aspects. Specifying the desired length ensures the summary will fit within your constraints, whether that's a quick overview or a detailed analysis.



Crafting a comprehensive prompt might seem like a lot of work upfront, but the time invested pays off in the quality of the summaries you receive. The more context and specificity you provide, the better ChatGPT can serve your needs. Happy prompting!