Four prompts you can use before lunch, plus the one rule that keeps AI from burning you. Built for people in the trades.
Open any AI tool in your browser, paste a prompt below, then replace the parts in brackets with your own information. That is the whole thing. You do not need an account with anything fancy and you do not need to know what a prompt is.
One habit to build from day one: the more context you give it, the better the answer. Tell it who you are, what job you are on, and who is going to read the result.
For the note you thumbed into your phone between inspections that somebody is now waiting on.
You are helping a project manager at a commercial mechanical contractor. Below are my rough notes from a job site. Turn them into a clear, professional update I can send to [WHO IS RECEIVING IT, e.g. the general contractor / the owner rep / my foreman]. Rules: - Keep every fact exactly as I wrote it. Do not invent details, dates, or numbers. - Group related items under short headings. - Flag anything that needs a decision from them in its own section. - Keep the tone direct and professional. No filler. - If something in my notes is unclear, list it at the end under "Needs clarification" instead of guessing. My notes: [PASTE YOUR NOTES HERE]
For specs, contracts, scopes, submittals, manuals, or anything else too long to read twice.
I am going to give you a document. I need to find specific information in it. My question: [WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW] Rules: - Answer only from what is in the document. If the answer is not in there, say so plainly. - Quote the exact wording that supports your answer, and tell me what section or page it came from. - If the document says something contradictory in two places, show me both. - Do not summarize the whole document. Just answer my question. Document: [PASTE THE DOCUMENT OR UPLOAD IT]
Delays, price increases, a change nobody wants to hear about. The one sitting in your drafts.
Help me write an email I have been putting off. Situation: [WHAT HAPPENED, IN PLAIN LANGUAGE] Who I am writing to: [WHO, AND HOW WELL YOU KNOW THEM] What I need from them: [THE OUTCOME YOU WANT] What I do NOT want to do: [e.g. accept blame that is not mine / sound like I am making excuses] Rules: - Lead with the point. Do not bury it three paragraphs down. - State facts, not apologies. One sentence of acknowledgment is enough. - End with a specific next step and a date. - Keep it under 200 words. - Do not use corporate filler words. Give me two versions: one direct, one softer.
For a long email chain, a meeting you half-remember, or a thread that went twenty replies deep.
Read the material below and pull out what actually needs to happen. Give me: 1. Action items, each with who owns it and any date mentioned. 2. Decisions that were already made, so I do not reopen them. 3. Open questions that nobody answered. 4. Anything that looks like it could become a problem. Rules: - Only use what is written here. Do not assume or fill in gaps. - If ownership of an item is unclear, say "owner unclear" rather than guessing. - Put it in short bullets, not paragraphs. Material: [PASTE THE EMAIL CHAIN, NOTES, OR TRANSCRIPT]
Make these yours: swap "commercial mechanical contractor" in Prompt 01 for your own trade, and the prompts start sounding like your company instead of a template.
AI drafts. You approve. Nothing leaves your office that you have not read.
It will occasionally state something wrong with total confidence. Not often, but enough that it matters when the thing it got wrong is a dimension, a date, or a dollar figure in a document with your name on it.
The good news is that checking is much faster than writing. That is where the time savings actually come from.
Free tools may use what you type to improve their systems. Assume anything you paste could be seen by someone else, and keep this list off limits unless you are on a business account with a data agreement in place.
Most of the time you can strip the sensitive part out and still get the answer you need. Replace real names with roles, real numbers with placeholders, and the prompt still works.
Prompts like these save minutes. A workflow built around how your company actually operates saves hours, every week, without anybody having to remember what to type.
That is what I build. Tell me the task that eats the most time in your business and I will tell you straight whether AI can take it off your plate.
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