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The prompt gym

Four short drills for the SDS framework. Pick a card, flip it, and run the prompt in your own Claude.

SDS is the framework from How to Prompt: Set the stage, Define the task, Specify the rules.

Every drill works the same way. Pick the card that pulls you, flip it, copy the prompt, and run it in your own Claude. In lessons, your pick is the lesson: I watch the conversation, not a scoreboard.

Drill 01 · the flagship

The book prompt

The course’s first proof moment. Pick a genre, ask the plain way, then rebuild the ask and watch the same question come back sharper.

Keep your SDS version of the ask. We re-run this exact question in lessons, from inside a project that knows you, and the difference is the whole point.

Drill 02

The gift finder

Pick someone you actually need a gift for. The stage is what you know about the person, and the ideas change as fast as the context does.

Nothing about the AI changed between your two asks. The ideas changed because the context you typed did.

Drill 03

Fix this prompt

Each card carries a genuinely weak prompt. Flip it to see which SDS part is missing, then run the repair.

Every weak prompt is missing a stage, a task, or the rules. Naming the missing part takes ten seconds once you know the three names.

Drill 04 · the reverse gear

Claude interviews you

Some things are too messy to type. Pick the card that names yours, reverse the flow, and let Claude pull the context out of you.

The full technique lives in Let it interview you on How to Prompt. The light version works anywhere: add one line, “Before you answer, ask me two or three questions.”

What you trained

All four are one framework: SDS. Keep it by you: the one-page SDS Cheat Sheet

Where next

Next step on the path: point it at your real work in Use Cases Want the framework itself again? How to Prompt is the quieter road back.