Showing a sample result on your listing

An electrician has developed a prompt that turns his job-site notes into a readable estimate for a homeowner. For the listing, he pastes in the best estimate he has ever gotten: a full renovation, with eleven line items, consistent prices, and flawless presentation. The problem, which he only realizes on rereading: that estimate is the product of three tries, a manual fix on the sales tax, and a copy-paste of his real rates. A buyer who runs the prompt with their own notes won't get that on the first try.

On YouPrompt, the sale is final once the prompt has been viewed: the buyer decides based on the excerpt and on a real result. The article on writing the listing explains why this sample carries so much weight. This one deals with how to make it.

Choosing the case to show

Take an average case, of normal difficulty, at the core of what the prompt is used for. Not the simplest, which proves nothing. Not the most spectacular, which the buyer won't find at home.

A good guide: the case that most of your buyers would have to handle, based on what you know of their line of work. If your prompt serves several uses, show the most frequent one and mention the others in the description.

Building input data that is fictional but credible

You can't publish a real client's notes. You need an invented case that looks like a real one, with its imperfections: an abbreviation, a missing piece of information, a pointless detail. A case that's too clean is suspect, and it tests nothing.

You can ask the AI to help you build it, as long as you make it imitate the mess of a real situation:

I sell a prompt that turns an electrician's job-site notes into a clear estimate for a homeowner. Invent a realistic fictional case: the raw notes the electrician would have taken on site, with abbreviations, a missing piece of information, and an unimportant detail. The job is [TYPE OF WORK]. Use names and addresses that don't exist, and plausible but rounded prices. Give only the notes, without the estimate.

Remove from the resulting case anything that looks like a real name, a real address, or a real brand, and state on the listing that it is fictional.

Generating the result under the right conditions

For the sample to be honest, it must come from a normal run of the prompt:

1. Open a fresh conversation, with no custom instructions or memory turned on, which could improve what the buyer will see.
2. Use the tool you advertise on the listing, with the same plan if the tool has several.
3. Keep the first correct answer. If you rerun it ten times to keep the prettiest one, the buyer will discover the gap. If you want to show the variability, display two results.
4. Don't touch up the text. If you have to fix something to make it presentable, it's the prompt that needs to change, and the method for testing a prompt helps you do that.

You can shorten a very long result by marking the cut with "[…]".

For an image prompt

An image result is judged at a glance, and the temptation to show only the rare gem is stronger. Show instead three successive generations with the same prompt, unsorted, or a set of variants with the variable changed. Write down the tool and the version used, because the same prompt doesn't give the same thing across them. Also check that you have the right to display these images: the tool's terms need to be reread, as the article on AI images and commercial use explains.

Presenting the sample so it can be understood

A result without its input teaches nothing. Show both in this order:

• What the user supplied: the job-site notes, the starting photo, the variables filled in.
• What the prompt produced: the estimate, the image, the table.
• A line of explanation: what the buyer should notice, and what they will need to check, for example "the amounts are fictional, the prompt doesn't calculate sales tax for you."

That last line shows that you know the limits of your prompt, which is more reassuring than a listing with no flaws.

Before publishing

Read only the input and the result, like a buyer. Can you say in one sentence what the prompt does and what has to be supplied? If not, replace the sample with a simpler case.