Every "clarify your prompt" tool asks you questions. That's backwards — answering is the hard part.
The standard move when you're stuck on a prompt is to have the model
interview you. "Ask me clarifying questions before you answer." It's good
advice right up until you're genuinely early on something, and then it fails,
because the questions are all versions of "what do you want?" — which is the
thing you came in not knowing.
I think that's the actual gap in prompting advice. "Be specific, give context,
state your constraints" is correct and slightly circular: specificity isn't a
writing skill, it's what you have left over once you've thought something
through. If you could list your constraints, you'd be done.
So I've been working the other way round: don't articulate, react.
WHY REACTION AND NOT INTERROGATION
Recognition is much cheaper than production. You can't summon the right word
on demand, but you know it instantly when it goes past — same reason multiple
choice is easier than an essay. Interrogation asks you to produce. Reaction
asks you to recognise. Only one of those is available when you're stuck.
THE LOOP, AND WHY EACH INSTRUCTION IS SHAPED THAT WAY
Round 1:
I'm trying to think through [THING] but can't articulate it properly yet.
Don't ask me clarifying questions. Give me 20 single words or short
phrases that come at this from different angles: some obvious, some
oblique, a few from unrelated fields. Number them. Don't explain them.
"Don't ask me clarifying questions" is load-bearing. Left alone the model
defaults to interviewing, and you'll answer with the same vague material you
started with, which it will then faithfully reflect back.
"Don't explain them" matters more than it looks. An explained word is a word
you evaluate on the model's reasoning instead of your own reaction. You want
the reaction uncontaminated.
Round 2, twice:
Kept: 3, 7, 12
These pulled at me but I don't know why yet: 4, 18
Dropped the rest. Give me 20 more, chase 4 and 18 hardest.
Two buckets, not one. "Kept" is agreement. "Pulled at me" is the interesting
signal and it should get the heavier weight, because it marks the direction
you haven't consciously chosen yet. Don't justify any of it — justification is
where you talk yourself back to the obvious.
Round 3:
Now write ONE self-contained prompt for what I'm actually after, built
from what I kept and what pulled at me. Weight the ones that pulled
hardest. Where I kept two things in tension, pose it as an open question
rather than resolving it. Don't list my words back to me — find the
through-line. End with a clear ask.
"Don't list my words back" is the difference between a brief and a word salad.
"Pose the tension as an open question" stops it flattening the thing you
hadn't decided yet into a decision you didn't make.
SOME EVIDENCE THAT THE REACTIONS ARE REAL WORK
I built this into a tool, so I have instrumented data rather than vibes.
1,450 word-reactions from 26 people. Median time to decide, by verb:
keep 47% 1.60s
drop 34% 1.89s
"pulls at me" 14% 2.13s
"don't know the word" 4% 2.24s
That ordering is the part I'd point at. If reacting were just sorting, the
times would be flat. They're not, and they're monotonic: agreement is
instant, rejection costs more, and the unresolved pull costs most of any real
decision. People deliberate hardest over the thing they can't yet justify —
which is exactly the signal you want steering round two.
Sessions also decay. Keep-rate by round: 55% / 49% / 47% / 45% / 31%. The
easy material runs out and your standards rise as your keeps accumulate.
Practical read: three rounds is about right, and a fourth is usually you
scraping. I'd call that directional, not solid — round 6 bounces back up on
too few cards to trust, and I'm not going to pretend the tail is clean.
LIMITS
26 people isn't a study. Different reaction times per verb is evidence the
three responses do different cognitive work; it isn't proof of anything about
creativity, and I'd push back on anyone who read it that way.
Disclosure: the loop above is the whole method and it works fine pasted into
any assistant. I also built it as a tool because doing it by hand gets tedious
by round three, and that's where the numbers came from. Free, no signup.
Longer argument: https://www.ideastew.com/how-it-works
Genuinely curious whether anyone here has a reaction-based technique rather
than an interrogation-based one. Everything I've come across in this space
asks questions, and I think that's a blind spot rather than a preference.