The 80/20 Principle

The 80/20 Principle

The real skill behind good AI prompts is older than computers

Context is the AI gospel right now. But the skill behind it can't be easily taught.

Ernie the Attorney's avatar
Ernie the Attorney
Jun 02, 2026
∙ Paid

The current AI gospel is simple: context is everything. Give the model enough background, and it produces something useful. Skip the context, and you get something generic.

That’s true. But it skips a step.

Context comes from attention

Giving good context isn’t a prompting skill. It’s a noticing skill.

To give an AI useful context, you have to know what mat…

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