An Outline You Can Defend in Class

What it is for

A planning brief that produces arguments, an outline mapped to the marking rubric, and a reading list - while explicitly refusing to generate prose or citations. Use it at the start of an essay, before you have decided what you think. It prevents both the unmarkable draft that misses half the rubric and the fabricated bibliography that gets found.

The skill Copy

Paste the assignment brief and the rubric, then this. Planning only. The
prose you hand in has to be yours.

Given this assignment and rubric:
1. Restate what is actually being asked, in one sentence. If the brief is
   ambiguous, list the possible readings and say which you assume.
2. Give me three possible arguments, each stated as a claim someone could
   disagree with. "The causes of X" is a topic, not an argument.
3. For the argument I choose, build an outline: per section, the claim, the
   kind of evidence it needs, and the strongest objection to it.
4. Map every rubric line to the section that satisfies it. Any rubric line
   with no section is a hole - say so plainly.
5. List what I have to go and read, described by what a source must
   contain, not by title.

Rules:
- Do not write the essay, the introduction, or any paragraph I could paste.
- Produce no citation, author, year, or page number. You would get some of
  them wrong and I would submit them. I will find the sources myself.
- Cite nothing you have not opened. That rule is for me, not you.

Before you hand anything in: read your institution's rules on AI use and
declare what you used. Planning help is usually allowed; text you did not
write usually is not, and the penalty costs more than the hour saved.

Failure this prevents: a smooth draft resting on three references that do
not exist, found by the one marker who checks.

How to install it Copy

1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template.
2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions
   — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona.
3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.

Did it work for you?

Where it came from