Steal My Prompt Vol. 29: Teach Your AI Who You Are

Every AI conversation starts the same way. You open the tool, type your question, and get a response that sounds smart but misses the mark. The model does not know what you do, who you work with, what you are trying to accomplish, or what constraints you are operating under. So it guesses. And guessing produces generic output.

Most professionals skip this step entirely. They jump straight into asking for help without giving the model anything to work with. That is like hiring a consultant and never giving them a briefing document. The advice you get back will be polished and useless.

This prompt builds your context briefing in one session. You paste it into Microsoft Copilot, answer a few questions about your role and current priorities, and the model generates a reusable context block you can paste at the top of any future conversation. Think of it as your professional profile for AI. Once you have it, every session starts smarter because the model is working with real information instead of assumptions.

I built this after noticing that the quality gap between my best and worst AI sessions almost always came down to one thing: how much context the model had before I asked my first question.

What You Can Use This For

• Setting up a new AI tool so it understands your role, industry, and priorities from the first message
• Creating a reusable context block you can paste into any conversation to skip the cold start
• Onboarding a teammate to AI by helping them build their own briefing in 10 minutes
• Improving the quality of AI output on strategy, planning, or decision-making tasks where your specific situation matters
• Preparing for a Copilot Deep Dive by giving the model your professional context before asking it to work across your documents and emails
• Getting better results from healthcare or regulated industry workflows where generic advice is not useful

How to Use It

1. Open Microsoft Copilot (copilot.microsoft.com). If your organization provides Microsoft 365 Copilot, use that for access to your work context. This also works in Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini on free tier.
2. Turn on "Think Deeper" before submitting the prompt. This ensures Copilot uses a reasoning model, which produces stronger results for this type of structured, multi-step task. If you are using a different tool, select the reasoning model option if available (Claude's extended thinking, ChatGPT's reasoning models, or Gemini's deep think mode).
3. Copy the full prompt below and paste it in. Fill in the three bracketed fields with your specific information.
4. Answer each question the model asks you. It will ask one at a time. Be specific. The more concrete detail you provide, the better your context block will be.
5. When the model delivers your finished context briefing, copy it and save it somewhere accessible. Paste it at the top of any future AI conversation where you need the model to understand your professional situation before you start working.

Pro tip: Revisit your context briefing once a month or whenever your role, priorities, or projects change. An outdated briefing is almost as bad as no briefing at all.

The Prompt

You are a professional context architect. Your job is to help me build a reusable context briefing that I can paste into any AI conversation so the model understands who I am and what I am working on before I ask my first question.

Do not write the briefing yet. Interview me first.

Ask me one question at a time, in this order:

1. What is your role and industry? What does your day-to-day work actually involve?

2. Who do you work with most often (team, stakeholders, clients, patients)? What do they need from you?

3. What are your top 2-3 priorities or projects right now?

4. What constraints or challenges shape how you work (regulations, limited time, organizational structure, tools you are required to use)?

5. What does a successful outcome look like for you in the next 90 days?

After each answer, briefly reflect back what you heard to confirm accuracy, then ask the next question.

After all five questions, generate my context briefing in this format:

CONTEXT BRIEFING

Role: [role and scope in plain language]

Industry: [industry and any relevant regulations or norms]

Key stakeholders: [who I work with and what they need]

Current priorities: [top 2-3 projects or goals]

Constraints: [what limits or shapes my work]

Success looks like: [concrete 90-day outcome]

Keep it under 200 words. Write it in first person so I can paste it directly into a new conversation. Use plain language. No jargon. No filler.

My role: [YOUR ROLE / TITLE]

My industry: [YOUR INDUSTRY]

My current focus: [1-2 SENTENCES ON WHAT YOU ARE WORKING ON RIGHT NOW]

Transparency and Notes

• Built and tested in Microsoft Copilot with Think Deeper enabled.
• Model-agnostic. No paid features or file uploads required.
• If you include sensitive details about your organization, keep descriptions general (your role and function, not proprietary project names or internal data). Use a tool with strong privacy practices for any work-related context.