Class 3 Handout

Class 3 Key Lessons

Great prompts today are less like rigid plans and more like creative briefs for an extremely capable collaborator.
Don’t underestimate your agent. Before you plan, find out what it can actually do: search a model’s name on X, and look at the prompts behind the most impressive results.
When you find something impressive, try to copy it, or use the same technique to make something of your own.
Working with AI takes a CEO’s skill set: making quick, tasteful decisions with limited information, while managing someone more capable than you.
A great prompt covers seven things: what you’re trying to do, how it should feel and what to reference, who it’s for, which tools to use, what’s fixed and what’s up to the agent, the order of work, and how the agent will check its own work.
Say which decisions are fixed and which are up to the agent, and leave room for it to surprise you.
Ask the agent to review and improve its own work before it calls the job done.
There’s no right length for a prompt, only more or less control. Some of the most impressive results came from very short prompts.

Each Codex thread only remembers what happened inside it. What you learned this week stays scattered across your threads until you pull it together.
You don’t have to remember your past threads. Ask Codex to find them, and to tell you what you worked on, where you got stuck, and what you dropped.
Talk out loud while Codex works. Only you know what’s in your head, and a voice note is the fastest way to get it in.
If an answer feels like too much, trust that feeling. Ask Codex to say it again: simpler, shorter, differently.
Ask about the same project from different angles, like “What would this look like if it were easy?” or “What am I avoiding here?” Each angle shows you something the others miss.
Save project plans to your personal OS, so the next thread starts from them instead of from zero.

By the end of class three, you should have: