Show, don’t tell.

You ask for a toast, a post or a thank-you note, and it comes back sounding like a greeting card written by a committee. You reply “make it sound more like me,” and it adds a joke you would never tell.

The trouble is the adjectives. “Funny but heartfelt” means one thing to you and something else to an assistant that has read more wedding toasts than any human could sit through. Describing a style is like describing a haircut over the phone. You will get a haircut. It will not be the one you meant.

Example is the E in DREAM, and it swaps the description for the thing itself. One sample of what good looks like, or one sample of what you can’t stand, does more than a paragraph of adjectives. A text you sent. A paragraph you were proud of. A layout you liked. The opening line you never want to hear again.

Say what to take from it

There is a catch. Anthropic’s prompting guide calls examples one of the most reliable ways to steer an answer’s format and tone. The company’s blog adds a caution: current models follow the details of an example very closely. Hand over one of your texts and you may get your own sentence back with the names changed.

So an example needs a caption. Say what to take from it: the length, the dryness, the short sentences, the layout. Then say what to leave alone. “Don’t reuse my phrases” takes five seconds to type and saves a rewrite.

You don’t need a pile of them. Start with one. And plenty of prompts need none: if you are asking for a packing list, skip it. Add an example when voice or format matters, or when the first answer missed and you can’t explain why. That is usually the moment words have run out and showing is all that is left.

Side by side

The weak version asks for “funny but heartfelt” and leaves the assistant to guess whose funny. The strong version shows it: one real text, sent to the real sister, with a note on what to take (the dry tone, the short sentences, the one real feeling) and an instruction not to reuse it. It supplies two stories, so the assistant doesn’t invent a childhood you never had. And it includes a “not like this,” which fences off a whole genre of toast in one line. Nobody at that wedding has to hear what the dictionary says about love.

So far you have done all the talking. For the big, personal questions, the better move is to hand over the microphone. That is the A, and it’s next.