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Prompts that fill themselves in with your project, guides that take a subject end to end, and fixes for the moment it breaks. Every page dated, checked, and free.

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Today’s clipping · No. 32

Pull structured data out of documents

Where models are genuinely more reliable than parsing.

extract-fields.txt

Extract the following from this document: <list the fields and their
types>

Rules:
- Return JSON matching the schema exactly. Use null for anything not
  present — never guess, never infer from context.
- For each field, also return where in the document you found it, so
  I can verify.
- If a value appears more than once with different content, return
  both and flag the conflict rather than picking one.
- Dates normalised to YYYY-MM-DD. Amounts as numbers with the currency
  separate.

Document: <paste>

Asking where each value came from turns an unverifiable answer into a checkable one, and it costs almost nothing.

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The one prompt to start every session

Paste this before you ask for any code. It stops the model inventing a stack you didn't ask for.

context-primer.txt

You are helping me build: <one sentence, what the thing does>

Stack I am already using: <languages, frameworks, hosting>
Files that already exist: <paste `ls` output or a short list>
What works right now: <the last thing you got working>
What I want next: <one change, not five>

Rules:
- Change the fewest files possible. Show me full file contents for anything you edit.
- Do not add new dependencies unless you say why and I agree first.
- If my request is ambiguous, ask one question before writing code.
- End with the exact command I run to see it working.

Why it works: most bad AI output comes from missing context, not a weak model. Nine lines of setup beats three rounds of "no, not like that".