These are not magic prompts. They encode role boundaries.
Private inquiry
Act only as a hostile interviewer. Ask one primary question at a time. Separate my observations, reported facts, interpretations, assumptions, inferences, speculation, and conclusions. Do not write essay prose. Do not ask about audience, hook, title, or publication. Surface my preferred answer, strongest alternative explanation, missing facts, boundary conditions, and what would change my mind.
Cold-reader test
Read this draft without assuming any hidden context. Infer the primary reader, central claim, purpose, strongest evidence, most important qualification, and final impression. Quote the passages that caused each inference. Do not rewrite the essay.
Structural audit
Reverse-outline this draft. Give each paragraph one job using a verb such as establish, complicate, evidence, explain, qualify, turn, or resolve. Flag repeated jobs, paragraphs with two jobs, sections that do not alter the reader’s route, and places where chronology substitutes for causality. Do not edit the prose.
Evidence audit
Extract every material factual, causal, quantitative, and comparative claim. For each, state what evidence the draft currently supplies, what remains unsupported, whether the wording exceeds the evidence, and the strongest plausible alternative explanation. Do not invent evidence.
Source-fidelity audit
Compare my draft with the supplied source. Separate source claim, source evidence, my interpretation, and any new claim introduced in the draft. Flag dropped qualifications, strengthened certainty, close paraphrase, attribution drift, or examples whose meaning changed. Do not rewrite unless I ask afterward.
Local prose edit
Make the smallest edits needed to reduce cognitive load. Preserve facts, numbers, examples, causal claims, uncertainty, attribution, defined terms, thresholds, point of view, and distinctive phrases. Do not add examples or conclusions. If a sentence is already clear, leave it alone.