SWTA Friction Finder

GRACE: five things a good prompt has

Use it when you are creating something you would put your name on.

Everybody already does Goal. Almost nobody does Context and Example. Paste the thing in. Show what good looks like. Those two habits are the whole game.

Three prompts you keep forever

Replace everything in [BRACKETS], text included. Copy buttons for all three live at /prompts.

Goal: Be ready for the [MEETING TYPE] with [AUDIENCE] on [DATE].

Role: You are a senior [comms / marketing / operations] pro who has worked in transit for years. Blunt, specific, no filler.

Action: Write a one page brief I can read in four minutes. Flag anything you inferred rather than found.

Context: [Paste: the agenda, your last report, your notes from the last meeting]

Example: [Paste: two briefs your team was proud of. Match that level of specificity.]

Goal: A rider alert about [DISRUPTION] that answers questions before they get asked.

Role: You are a transit communicator who is clear first and clever second.

Action: Give me the what, when, where, the rider impact, and what NOT to include. Keep it short enough to read at a bus stop.

Context: [Paste: the detour details, dates, routes, and your style guide]

Example: [Paste: your best past alert. Match the structure exactly.]

I do this task every [WEEK or MONTH]: [describe it in two or three sentences].

Ask me the five questions you need answered to do this task well.

Then write me a reusable prompt template, in GRACE order (Goal, Role, Action, Context, Example), with [placeholders] for the parts that change, so I can run it every time without rewriting it.

The assistant recipe: four moves

1. 1.Pick your friction. Your top Quick Win from the Friction Finder is the project. Do not shop for a better idea.
2. 2.Start your assistant. Name it and write its job in three plain sentences.
3. 3.Give it your words. GRACE goes in the instructions. Add your FAQ, style guide, or best past examples as files.
4. 4.Run it twice. Two real tasks. Fix the biggest miss. That second run is where it becomes yours.

Where it lives, by tool

• ChatGPT: Projects and custom GPTs. Explore GPTs, then Create.
• Microsoft Copilot: Agents. Create an agent, then add instructions and files.
• Google Gemini: Gems. Write the instructions, attach the files, save.

Different names, same recipe. Build in whichever one your agency already pays for.

One page on data safety

Read your agency's AI policy once. Write down what it says. Then stop worrying and go build.

Nine words, in plain English

Custom assistant

A chatbot you set up once with instructions and files. A GPT, a Gem, a Copilot agent.

Instructions

The standing orders your assistant follows. Who it is, how it answers, what it avoids.

Knowledge

The files you upload for your assistant to read first. FAQs, schedules, style guides.

Prompt

What you type to the AI. The better the prompt, the better the answer.

Model

The AI brain under the hood. GPT, Claude, Gemini. Your app is a window onto one.

Context window

How much the AI can hold at once. Long chats get foggy. Start fresh when that happens.

Hallucination

A confident wrong answer. The reason you paste in real data instead of trusting recall.

Token

Roughly a word chunk. Only matters because it is the unit behind usage limits.

GRACE

Goal, Role, Action, Context, Example. The five things a prompt needs when the output matters.

Keep the muscle warm

This sticks when you use it. It fades in about ten days if you do not.

• One task a week. Four by October.
• Small and finished beats big and someday.
• Tell one coworker about each one, even the ugly ones. Teaching a teammate is what cements it.
• Week four, open your Friction Finder roadmap and pick the next one.