Guide 6 of 6, 5 min read
How to build your own prompt library
Save the prompts that work, turn them into templates with blanks, and keep them one click away. A simple system that takes ten minutes.
The people who get the most out of AI are not better at writing prompts from scratch. They write a good prompt once, keep it, and reuse it. This guide sets up a simple library you will actually use.
Start with the jobs you repeat
Look back at your last two weeks of chats. Which requests did you make more than once? For most people the list is short: rewriting emails, summarising long threads, turning notes into actions, explaining something new. Those are the prompts worth saving.
Turn each one into a template
A saved prompt is only useful if you can reuse it without editing it each time. Find the parts that change and replace them with clear blanks in capitals between double braces:
Summarise the thread below for {{AUDIENCE}}.
Lead with the decision, then open questions, then who owns what.
Keep it under {{WORD_LIMIT}} words.
Thread:
{{THREAD}}The reusable prompt template prompt will do this conversion for you. Paste a prompt that worked and it hands back a template with the blanks marked.
Improve it every time it misses
When a saved prompt gives you an answer you have to fix, do not just fix the answer. Fix the prompt. If you always end up asking for something shorter, add a word limit. If the tone is always off, add an example of the tone you want. After three or four rounds, the prompt rarely needs correcting. This habit is called iterative prompting.
Pick one place to keep them
The best place is the one you will open. Common choices:
- A notes app with one note per prompt and a clear title, such as "Thread summary for my manager".
- Custom instructions or projects in ChatGPT or Claude, for prompts that should apply to everything in an area of work.
- A text expander, so typing a short code pastes the whole prompt.
- The Promptlexity extension, which keeps the whole library and your starred prompts in a side panel in Chrome.
Whatever you choose, give each prompt a name that describes the job, not the technique. "Make this email firmer" is easier to find than "tone transfer v2".
Chain prompts for bigger jobs
Some tasks are too big for one prompt. Break them into steps and save each step: one prompt to outline, one to draft, one to edit. Run them in order and paste each answer into the next. This is called prompt chaining, and a small chain of reliable prompts beats one huge prompt that tries to do everything.
Graduate your best prompts into skills
When a prompt has grown into a full set of instructions with examples and rules, it is ready to become a skill. A skill lives in your assistant's settings and gets used automatically when the job comes up. See how to add a skill to Claude to set one up, or download a ready-made one from the skills library.
Share what works
If one of your prompts is better than what is already in the library, submit it. We test every submission on real tasks, and the good ones go in with your credit.