The best AI prompt test doesn't use AI

The people who built Claude have a test for AI instructions, and it doesn't use AI at all.

It's in Anthropic's own prompting guide, and they call it the golden rule: show your instructions to a colleague who has little context on the task and ask them to follow them. If they'd be confused, Claude will most likely be confused too.

Most of us never run that test. When you write instructions for AI, you already know the job, so your own head fills every gap without you noticing. The page reads fine to you because you are the one person who doesn't need it.

So try it this afternoon.

Pick one job you've handed to AI, or one you'd like to. Print the instructions and everything the AI works from: the examples, the template, the notes. Hand the pages to someone on your team who never does that job, and say nothing.

Then watch where they stop.

Every question they ask is something that's still in your head and missing from the page. Every place they guess is a place Claude is guessing too, except Claude won't tell you it guessed. It will hand you a confident answer built on the gap.

Write the answers in, then hand the pages to someone else and watch again. When a person can do the job from the page without asking you a single thing, it's ready for AI.

You'll also have written the page your next new hire needs on day one.