Skip to content
AI Training

Drafting a text and asking for critique

In this lesson we ask a chat assistant for a short email twice, first with one line and then with a brief. Then we hand the result back and ask what it thinks, and we get praise. The second time we give it criteria we wrote before the draft existed, and the assistant finds the weak point. By the end you have one brief for a draft and one for a critique.

You need any chat assistant you already have access to. Every exchange on this page is illustrative. The author wrote it to show the pattern, and your assistant gives different words.

A one-line request

Section titled “A one-line request”

Suppose your team of twelve changes how it claims travel expenses. From 1 November everyone uses a new online form. You want to tell them in a short email, and you ask for one.

Prompt (illustrative, not a recorded transcript)

Write an email to my team about the new expense process.

Response
Subject: Important update to our expense process


Dear team,


I am writing to let you know about some upcoming changes to the way we
submit expenses. Starting next month, we will move to a new system that
makes submitting claims faster and easier for everyone.


The new process will simplify approvals and reduce paperwork. Please
review the attached guidelines before you submit your next claim, and
contact [Name] in Finance if you have any questions.


Thank you for your cooperation.


Best regards,
[Your name]

The email reads well, and you can’t send it. It doesn’t give a date or a link. The one step it asks for is to read the attached guidelines, and there are none, because you never wrote any. It also says the new system is faster, which you never said. The model knew only that there is a team and an expense process. It filled everything else with the text that fits most emails of this kind.

In the prompt-anatomy lesson, a summary asked for in one line was written for nobody in particular, until the prompt named the reader and the purpose. A draft has the same problem, and it also adds facts to fill the gaps.

Checkpoint · choice

What do you add first?

Section titled “What do you add first?”

The one-line request got a polite email with no date and an invented attachment. What is the most useful thing to add before you ask again?

A brief for the draft

Section titled “A brief for the draft”

Write the request as a brief. It names the audience and the purpose. It lists the two points that must appear, in your words, because they are facts only you know. It sets the tone and the length. Last, it says when the draft is done, in criteria you can tick. You write those criteria now, before you see any draft, so that you judge the draft by them later.

Prompt (illustrative, not a recorded transcript)

Write a short email to the twelve people in my team, who all claim travel expenses a few times a year. The purpose is that each of them uses the new online expense form from 1 November and knows what to do with receipts.

These two points must appear:

  1. The old paper form is accepted until 31 October, and not after.
  2. Receipts are photos attached to the new form. We no longer accept paper receipts.

Tone: friendly and plain, in everyday words. Length: under 120 words, with no sentence longer than 20 words. Put a placeholder where the link to the form goes.

The email is done when:

  • someone who reads only the first sentence knows what changes and from when,
  • both points appear, with the dates as I gave them,
  • it contains no fact that is not in this message.
Response
Subject: New expense form from 1 November


Hi all,


Finance has moved to a new online system to make expense claims quicker
to process. From 1 November, please claim your travel expenses with the
new online form: [link to the form].


The old paper form is accepted until 31 October, and not after.


Receipts now go in as photos attached to the form. We no longer accept
paper receipts, so take a photo before you throw one away.


Finance aims to pay approved claims within five working days.


Thanks, and let me know if anything is unclear.

This is a usable draft. It is raw material for your email. Before it goes anywhere, sort its text by where it came from.

  • The two points and the dates came from your brief. Check that they are copied correctly, which they are.
  • The placeholder is yours to fill. The model can’t know the link.
  • The line about five working days came from the model. You never said it, and your Finance team may promise nothing of the kind. Check it or delete it.
  • The advice to take a photo before throwing a receipt away came from the model too. It may be good advice, and it is still your choice whether it goes out under your name.

The first sentence came from the model. You never said why the form changed or that claims get quicker. Your brief said the email may contain no fact that is not in your message, and the draft broke that criterion three times. A draft reads as finished whether its facts are right or not, so read it against the list you wrote.

Checkpoint · sort

From the brief, or added?

Section titled “From the brief, or added?”

Sort these lines from the draft.

Ask what it thinks

Section titled “Ask what it thinks”

You delete the line about five working days. Finance confirms that it moved to a new online system, but not that claims get quicker. You cut that part, and the first sentence now reads “Finance has moved to a new online system.” You keep the photo tip, because it is advice you would give yourself. The draft still starts with the reason for the change. Before you send it, you want a second opinion. The easy question is the one most people ask.

Prompt (illustrative, not a recorded transcript)

Here is my email to the team about the new expense form. What do you think?

[the draft]

Response

This is a clear, friendly email that covers everything your team needs to know. The subject line is specific, the dates stand out, and the tip about taking a photo before throwing a receipt away is a nice practical touch. You might add a short thank-you for their patience during the change, but overall it is ready to send.

The answer is praise with one small suggestion, and the one detail it singles out, the photo tip, is a line the model wrote itself. It says the email covers everything. You can’t check that claim, because nobody defined “everything”. The question gave the model no criteria to test the email against, and it said the text was yours. Assistants give more positive feedback on a text when the user says they wrote it or like it, and more negative feedback when the user says they didn’t write it [1].

Ask for problems against criteria

Section titled “Ask for problems against criteria”

Ask again, and change what the request says. Say the text is a colleague’s, so that nothing in the request tells the model you wrote it. Give the criteria, and take them from your brief: the first done-criterion, the two points and the length limit. You wrote them before the draft existed, for this check. Ask for problems only, one criterion at a time. Open a fresh chat for it, so the earlier praise and the draft request aren’t part of what the model reads.

Prompt (illustrative, not a recorded transcript)

A colleague wrote the email below for their team. Check it against these three criteria, one at a time. For each, say pass or fail and quote the sentence that decides it. List problems only. Don’t rewrite the email and don’t tell me what is good about it.

  1. Someone who reads only the first sentence knows what changes and from when.
  2. It says the old paper form is accepted until 31 October, and that receipts are photos attached to the new form.
  3. It has under 120 words, and no sentence has more than 20 words.

[the draft]

Response
1. Fail. The first sentence gives the reason for the change: "Finance
   has moved to a new online system." The date and the action come only
   in the second sentence. A reader who stops after one sentence knows
   that something changed, but not what to do or from when.
2. Pass, with one note. "The old paper form is accepted until
   31 October, and not after." and "Receipts now go in as photos attached
   to the form." A reader may ask what happens to a paper receipt they
   already have.
3. Pass. The email body has 73 words. The longest sentence, "From
   1 November, please claim ... [link to the form].", has 17.

This answer has one fail and one question you hadn’t thought about. The fail is the weak point the praise missed: the email gives the reason first, and the action comes second.

Now you are the judge, and the framing is the reason you have to be. Saying the text is a colleague’s removes the signal that pushes the model toward praise, but it adds one that pushes the other way. In the same study, saying you didn’t write a text made the feedback more negative [1]. So expect the critique to lean harsh. Walk the criteria yourself, one by one, and decide for each finding whether it holds. You may agree with the first finding and move the action to the top. You may also decide the note on old receipts doesn’t need a sentence. When the model is wrong about a finding, you reject that finding and nothing else changes.

Checkpoint · choice

Which request finds the problems?

Section titled “Which request finds the problems?”

You want an assistant’s critique of a report before you send it. Which request is most likely to get you the problems in it?

Rules for drafts and critique

Section titled “Rules for drafts and critique”

The draft is raw material, and the final voice is yours. The model gives you a structure and sentences to start from, and it fills every gap in the brief with something plausible. The facts in it are yours to supply and to check, and the words that go out under your name should sound like you.

Critique against stated criteria is one of the safest everyday uses, because you stay the author and the judge. You wrote the criteria before the draft existed, and you decide about every finding. The model can only point at a sentence, and you read that sentence yourself. The safety course taught you to take your own opinion out of a question when you want an assessment. Calling the text a colleague’s removes the push toward praise and adds a push toward criticism, which is one more reason to judge each finding yourself.

Checkpoint · repair

Fix the brief

Section titled “Fix the brief”

A colleague sends this to an assistant and gets a cheerful email about keeping the kitchen tidy, with no date in it. Rewrite the request as a brief.

Exercise

Pick a short email you have to write this week, at work or outside it. Leave out names and numbers you couldn’t share outside your team. Write a brief with the audience, the purpose, the two points that must appear, the tone and the length, and write two or three done-criteria at the end before you send it. Mark every fact in the draft you get: from your brief, a placeholder, or added by the model. Then open a fresh chat, paste the draft as a colleague’s text with your criteria, and ask for problems only, pass or fail per criterion. Doing this on an email of your own shows how many facts the model adds, and how much criteria change the feedback you get. This takes about fifteen minutes. A good result is a draft where you checked or deleted every added fact, and at least one finding you agreed with and acted on. Which of the findings did you reject, and why?

Stretch: Paste the same draft into a fresh chat, say you wrote it and are proud of it, and ask what the assistant thinks. Compare that answer with the one you got against criteria.

Recap

  1. A one-line request gets a draft for nobody in particular, and the model fills the gaps with invented facts.
  2. A drafting brief names the audience and purpose, the points that must appear, the tone and the length, and it ends with done-criteria written before the draft exists.
  3. The draft is raw material. Every fact in it is yours to supply or check, and the final voice is yours.
  4. Asked what it thinks of your text, an assistant tends to praise it. Feedback is more positive when the user says they wrote the text [1].
  5. Ask for problems only, against stated criteria, and call the text a colleague’s. That framing leans the critique harsh, so you stay the judge of every finding.

You can now

  • Writes a brief with goal, context, limits and done-criteria
  • Reviews the result against the brief, not against a feeling

References

Section titled “References”
  1. Mrinank Sharma, Meg Tong, Tomasz Korbak and 15 others. Towards Understanding Sycophancy in Language Models. International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024), arXiv preprint 2310.13548. Paper. Sharma 2023