FROM THE ARCHIVE / EP05
Wasn’t in the Prompt
Engineering is so much easier when you leave out the requirements.
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Same circus. One frame.
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Panel 1
The Intern proudly turns his laptop toward Jim, who leans in with interest.
The Intern: I had AI redesign the machine. Half the parts, twice the throughput.
Jim: Let’s see.
Panel 2
Jim points at the tooling on the laptop's machine design.
Jim: Where do you change the tooling?
The Intern: You don’t. It’s optimized for this product.
Panel 3
Jim points toward a rack of different products. The Intern's smile fades.
Jim: The customer runs twelve products.
The Intern: I didn’t put that in the prompt.
Panel 4
The Intern turns back to his keyboard, confidence restored. Jim leans forward with exhausted clarity.
The Intern: Okay, I’ll tell it to act like an experienced engineer.
Jim: An experienced engineer would have read the spec
One more episode?
An after-hours conversation about everyone's contribution.
Read episode 6