The Prompt Engineer's Compendium: 40 Innovative Techniques for Advanced Text Summarization
Introduction: Beyond Extraction and Abstraction
The discipline of text summarization, a cornerstone of Natural Language Processing (NLP), has undergone a profound transformation. Historically, the field was dominated by a binary choice between two fundamental approaches: extractive and abstractive summarization.1 Extractive methods operate like a meticulous archivist, identifying and lifting the most statistically significant sentences or phrases directly from the source text to form a summary.3 This approach, often powered by algorithms like TextRank or LexRank that score sentences based on features like word frequency and centrality, excels at preserving factual accuracy and is well-suited for summarizing news articles or academic papers.1 Its primary limitation, however, is a potential lack of coherence and fluency, as the resulting summary is a collage of existing text fragments.6
Conversely, abstractive summarization functions more like a human expert, reading and internalizing a text to generate a new, synthetic summary that captures the core essence in novel language.1 This method leverages complex deep learning models to understand semantics and paraphrase key ideas, offering the promise of concise, fluent, and human-like summaries.2 While powerful, abstractive methods have historically faced challenges, including a greater propensity for "hallucinations"—the generation of misleading or factually incorrect information not present in the source material.5 Human evaluations often reflect this trade-off, viewing abstractive summaries as more coherent but extractive ones as more informative and relevant.5
This traditional dichotomy has been rendered obsolete by the advent of large-scale, transformer-based language models such as BERT and the GPT series.5 These architectures, with their sophisticated self-attention mechanisms, can process vast contexts and develop a nuanced understanding of language that transcends simple sentence scoring or basic paraphrasing.8 The true paradigm shift, however, lies not just in the models themselves, but in how they are controlled. The modern practice of advanced summarization is defined by the use of "instruction style prompts," which allow a user to precisely steer the model's generative process.7
This development reframes the task entirely. The prompt is no longer a simple request for a summary; it is a sophisticated control layer. A skilled prompt engineer can now design instructions that precisely calibrate the balance between extractive fidelity and abstractive fluency. Rather than choosing one method over the other, one can now demand a summary that is, for instance, 80% extractive to anchor it in factual detail, and 20% abstractive to weave those details into a seamless narrative. This report presents a compendium of 40 such innovative prompting techniques. They are categorized into five distinct families of application, moving from foundational technical control to advanced creative transformation. Each prompt is designed to unlock a specific capability of modern language models, transforming summarization from a simple act of information reduction into a powerful tool for analysis, creativity, and strategic communication.
Part I: Foundational and Technical Prompts
This section focuses on prompts that provide granular control over the summary's content, structure, and focus. These techniques move beyond generic summarization to enable targeted information retrieval and synthesis, forming the bedrock of advanced prompt engineering. They allow the user to dictate not just the length of the summary, but its very composition and analytical lens.
Hybrid Summarization Prompts
The most direct way to manage the classic trade-off between factual accuracy and readability is to explicitly command a hybrid of extractive and abstractive methods. These prompts instruct the model to perform a two-step process: first, identify the most critical components of the text, and second, synthesize them into a new, coherent whole. This approach leverages the model's capacity for both statistical identification and creative generation within a single command.
1. The Key Sentence Weaving Prompt
Prompt: "First, extract the 5 most critical sentences from the provided text that capture its central argument and key findings. Second, rewrite and combine these sentences into a single, coherent paragraph. Ensure that all original key terms, data points, and proper nouns are preserved in the final summary."
Format Suggestion: A single, dense paragraph. This format is ideal for executive summaries or abstracts where conciseness and information richness are paramount.
Example:
Source Text: A research paper on battery technology.
Generated Summary: "A breakthrough in solid-state battery design has resulted in a new lithium-metal anode that achieves an unprecedented 80% energy density retention after 800 cycles, a significant improvement over existing lithium-ion technologies. This stability is achieved through a novel ceramic electrolyte interface that prevents the formation of dendrites, which are a primary cause of short-circuiting and failure in high-density batteries. The technology, developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operates effectively at room temperature, eliminating the need for the external heating systems required by previous solid-state designs and paving the way for safer, longer-lasting batteries in electric vehicles and consumer electronics."
2. The Quote-and-Commentary Prompt
Prompt: "Generate a summary of the following text that alternates between direct, verbatim quotes of key phrases (no more than 10 words each) and abstractive sentences that explain the significance or context of each quote. The summary should follow a 'quote-then-explain' structure."
Format Suggestion: A bulleted list or a series of short paragraphs, with quotes clearly demarcated using quotation marks or italics. This format is excellent for academic reviews or annotated bibliographies.
Example:
Source Text: An article analyzing a new piece of legislation.
Generated Summary:
The legislation introduces a "technology-neutral carbon credit system," which fundamentally shifts the focus from subsidizing specific renewable sources to rewarding any technology based purely on its carbon reduction impact.
This system is built upon "real-time, verifiable emissions data," a requirement designed to prevent the fraud and misreporting that has plagued previous carbon offset markets.
Critics, however, warn of a potential "unintended consequence for grid stability," arguing that the unpredictable nature of some emerging technologies could jeopardize reliable power delivery without additional regulatory safeguards.
Keyword and Entity-Centric Prompts
These prompts reorient the summarization process around the most important lexical items in the text. Instead of a holistic, top-down summary, the model is instructed to build a bottom-up summary, starting with the core concepts and entities. This ensures that the final output is anchored to the specific terminology and topics that define the source document.
3. The Keyphrase-First Summary
Prompt: "First, perform keyphrase extraction on the following text to identify the top 10 most important keywords, entities, or technical terms. List these keyphrases. Then, write a summary that is constructed around these keyphrases, ensuring each one is defined or explained in the context of the text's main argument."
Format Suggestion: A two-part response. The first part is a numbered or bulleted list of the extracted keyphrases. The second part is a paragraph or series of paragraphs forming the summary. This is highly effective for creating study guides or onboarding materials for complex topics.
Example:
Source Text: A whitepaper on decentralized finance (DeFi).
Generated Summary:
Keyphrases: 1. Automated Market Maker (AMM), 2. Liquidity Pools, 3. Yield Farming, 4. Smart Contracts, 5. Impermanent Loss, 6. Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), 7. Oracles, 8. Staking, 9. Non-custodial Wallets, 10. Gas Fees.
Summary: This paper explores the core mechanisms of decentralized finance, which relies on self-executing Smart Contracts to automate financial transactions without intermediaries. A key innovation is the Automated Market Maker (AMM), which uses Liquidity Pools funded by users to enable permissionless trading. Participants engage in Yield Farming and Staking to earn rewards on their assets, which are held in Non-custodial Wallets for maximum security. However, users face risks such as Impermanent Loss and must contend with variable Gas Fees for transactions. The ecosystem's governance is often managed by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), and it relies on Oracles to feed real-world data into the blockchain.
4. The Thematic Cluster Summary
Prompt: "Analyze the provided text to identify its 3-4 primary thematic clusters, similar to a topic modeling approach like Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). For each identified theme, provide a concise, one-sentence summary and then list the top 5 associated keywords from the text that define that theme."
Format Suggestion: A structured outline with clear headings for each theme. This is ideal for analyzing long-form articles, reports, or book chapters to understand their underlying structure.
Example:
Source Text: A long-read article about the history of artificial intelligence.
Generated Summary:
Theme 1: Early Symbolic AI
Summary: The initial phase of AI research focused on rule-based systems and logical inference to replicate human problem-solving.
Keywords: Logic Theorist, LISP, expert systems, knowledge representation, good old-fashioned AI (GOFAI).
Theme 2: The Rise of Machine Learning
Summary: A paradigm shift occurred towards statistical methods, where models learn patterns from large datasets rather than being explicitly programmed.
Keywords: Neural networks, backpropagation, statistical learning, AI winter, pattern recognition.
Theme 3: The Modern Deep Learning Era
Summary: The convergence of massive datasets, powerful GPUs, and advanced architectures has enabled breakthroughs in areas like image and language understanding.
Keywords: Transformers, convolutional neural networks (CNN), big data, GPU, generative models.
Information Density and Complexity Prompts
A summary's utility is often determined by its intended audience. These prompts allow for precise control over the level of abstraction and complexity, enabling the creation of summaries tailored for different knowledge levels, from a complete novice to a domain expert.
5. The ELI5 (Explain Like I'm 5) Prompt
Prompt: "Summarize the following complex text as if you were explaining it to an intelligent 5-year-old. Use very simple language, short sentences, and at least one relatable analogy. Avoid all technical jargon."
Format Suggestion: A short, simple paragraph. This is a powerful tool for testing one's own understanding of a topic or for creating accessible content for a broad audience.
Example:
Source Text: A scientific explanation of CRISPR gene editing.
Generated Summary: "Imagine your body is made of building blocks, like LEGOs. Sometimes, one of the LEGO blocks is the wrong shape or color, which can make you sick. Scientists found a special tool called CRISPR. It's like tiny scissors that can find that one wrong LEGO block, snip it out, and put the right one in its place. It helps fix the instructions so your body can build things correctly!"
6. The Expert-to-Expert Abstract
Prompt: "Summarize this article for a specialist in the same field. Omit all introductory concepts, background information, and definitions of common terms. Focus exclusively on the novel contributions, the specific methodology used, the key quantitative results, and the implications for future research. Use precise technical terminology."
Format Suggestion: A dense, single paragraph, mimicking the style of an academic journal abstract. This is used for quickly assessing the novelty and relevance of a technical paper.
Example:
Source Text: The same CRISPR gene editing paper.
Generated Summary: "The study presents a novel Cas9 variant, spCas9-NG, engineered via directed evolution to recognize an NG protospacer adjacent motif (PAM), thereby expanding the targetable genomic landscape by approximately 25%. Using a high-throughput lentiviral screening platform, we demonstrate on-target editing efficiencies comparable to wild-type spCas9 at NGG PAMs, with a significant reduction in off-target activity at non-canonical NAG and NGA sites, as quantified by GUIDE-seq. The spCas9-NG ribonucleoprotein complex achieved over 90% indel formation in primary human T cells, suggesting immediate utility for therapeutic applications requiring precise editing outside of traditional NGG target sites."
Query-Based and Aspect-Focused Prompts
These prompts transform summarization from a general task into a targeted information extraction process. By providing a specific question or area of focus, the user directs the model's attention mechanisms to retrieve and synthesize only the most relevant information from a document, making it a highly efficient tool for research and analysis.8
7. The Query-Focused Summary
Prompt: "Using only the information contained in the provided text, generate a concise summary that directly answers the following question: '[Insert specific, detailed question here]'. Exclude any information that is not directly relevant to answering this question."
Format Suggestion: A direct, to-the-point paragraph that begins by answering the question. This is extremely useful for finding specific answers within long legal documents, contracts, or dense reports.
Example:
Source Text: A 50-page environmental impact report.
Question: "What specific mitigation strategies does the report propose to address the project's impact on local water quality?"
Generated Summary: "To address the project's impact on local water quality, the report proposes three specific mitigation strategies. First, it mandates the construction of a series of bioswales and retention ponds to capture and filter stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces before it reaches the adjacent river. Second, it requires the implementation of a continuous, real-time water quality monitoring system at designated upstream and downstream locations, with automated alerts for turbidity and pollutant levels exceeding predefined thresholds. Finally, the project must fund the restoration of 20 acres of native riparian habitat along the riverbank to serve as a natural buffer zone."
8. The Aspect-Based Summary
Prompt: "Summarize the provided text by focusing only on the [financial / ethical / technical / legal] aspects discussed. Create a separate, clearly labeled section for each aspect you are asked to summarize. If an aspect is not discussed, state that explicitly."
Format Suggestion: A structured response with distinct subheadings for each aspect. This allows for a multi-faceted analysis of a single document, perfect for team briefings where different members are responsible for different domains.
Example:
Source Text: An article about the launch of a new AI-powered hiring platform.
Prompt Aspect: "financial and ethical"
Generated Summary:
Financial Aspects:
The platform operates on a subscription-as-a-service (SaaS) model, with pricing tiered based on the number of job applicants processed per month. The company projects a 40% reduction in average time-to-hire for its clients, translating to significant operational cost savings. It has secured $15 million in Series A funding, led by Venture Capital Partners, to fuel market expansion.
Ethical Aspects:
The primary ethical concern addressed is algorithmic bias. The company claims its AI was trained on a dataset audited by a third-party ethics firm to mitigate demographic biases in candidate screening. However, the text notes that the system's reliance on historical hiring data could still perpetuate existing inequalities. The platform also raises privacy issues regarding the long-term storage and use of applicant data, a point the company's privacy policy does not fully clarify.
Part II: Constraint-Driven Summarization
This section explores a more radical approach to summarization, drawing inspiration from the literary movement known as Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or "workshop of potential literature").9 Oulipian techniques are built on the idea that imposing strict, often arbitrary, constraints on writing can paradoxically unlock creativity and force a deeper engagement with language.10 In the context of LLMs, these constraints serve as a powerful form of prompt engineering. Language models function by predicting the most probable next word in a sequence, which can lead to predictable and generic outputs.7 Oulipian constraints force the model to abandon these well-worn paths. To summarize a text without using the letter 'e,' for instance, the model must engage in a highly abstractive process, finding novel synonyms and sentence structures to convey the core meaning. This "labyrinth" 10 it must navigate can lead to summaries that are not only unique in form but also reveal the text's essence in a surprisingly insightful way.
Lexical Constraint Prompts
These prompts impose severe limitations on the vocabulary the model can use, forcing it to find the most fundamental concepts that can be expressed under duress.
9. The Lipogrammatic Summary
Prompt: "Summarize the core message of the provided text in a single paragraph of approximately 50 words, but without using the letter 'E'."
Format Suggestion: A single, short paragraph. The challenge lies in maintaining clarity and meaning while adhering to the strict lipogrammatic rule.9
Example:
Source Text: An article about the importance of renewable energy to combat climate change.
Generated Summary: "Our world is too warm. A foul poison fills our sky. To fix this, a big switch to sun and wind for all our motors is a must. This plan is vital for our kids, a gift of a world that is not sick. Action now is what all ask."
10. The Univocalic Summary
Prompt: "Distill the central thesis of the following text into a short summary that uses only one vowel: '[A/E/I/O/U]'. All other letters (consonants) are permitted."
Format Suggestion: A few short, poetic sentences. This constraint tests the model's phonological and lexical creativity to an extreme degree.9
Example:
Source Text: A philosophical text about the nature of freedom.
Prompt Vowel: 'O'
Generated Summary: "No bonds hold down our own thoughts. Our own will controls our lot. Most of life's doors show no locks. To know this is to grow strong, not to rot. Choose your own road, long or short."
11. The Tautogram Summary
Prompt: "Write a summary of the provided text where every single word begins with the letter 'S'."
Format Suggestion: A single sentence or a short, alliterative paragraph. This forces the model to search its vocabulary for synonyms that fit the tautogrammatic constraint.11
Example:
Source Text: A report on the success of a new marketing strategy.
Generated Summary: "Strategic social spots successfully stimulated substantial sales, surprising skeptical stakeholders. Statistics show significant, sustained surges, solidifying strong sector standing. Such success suggests similar strategies should soon spread system-wide."
Structural Constraint Prompts
These prompts focus on the architecture of the summary, dictating the flow and connection between words and sentences in a non-traditional manner.
12. The "Snowball" Summary
Prompt: "Summarize the text in the form of a 'snowball' (or rhopalism), where the summary consists of a sequence of single words, each one letter longer than the last. The sequence should capture the progression of the text's main idea."
Format Suggestion: A list of words, each on a new line. This Oulipian technique forces extreme distillation, as each word must carry significant conceptual weight.9
Example:
Source Text: An article describing the process of scientific discovery.
Generated Summary:
"We
ask
why.
Ideas
emerge,
testing
reveals
answers,
knowledge
blossoms."
13. The Sentence Chaining (Stile) Summary
Prompt: "Create a summary of the text where the last word or phrase of each sentence becomes the subject or opening phrase of the next sentence. The summary should be 3-4 sentences long."
Format Suggestion: A single paragraph. This technique creates a logical or thematic chain, forcing the model to find connections between different aspects of the text.9
Example:
Source Text: A description of a new software development methodology.
Generated Summary: "The new framework prioritizes iterative development cycles. These development cycles allow for continuous user feedback. This user feedback is crucial for refining product features in real-time. Real-time refinement ultimately leads to a more successful market launch."
14. The Acrostic Summary
Prompt: "Generate a summary of the text in the form of an acrostic poem. The first letter of each line must spell out the central keyword of the text. The keyword is: '[Insert Keyword]'."
Format Suggestion: A poem or a series of bullet points. This format requires the model to structure its key points around a central theme represented by the keyword.
Example:
Source Text: An article about the principles of effective leadership.
Keyword: "LEADER"
Generated Summary:
Listens actively to the concerns and ideas of the entire team.
Empowers individuals by delegating authority and trusting their judgment.
Articulates a clear and compelling vision for the future.
Demonstrates integrity and accountability in all actions.
Encourages growth and provides opportunities for development.
Recognizes contributions and celebrates collective successes.
The N+7 Transformation Prompt
This technique is a meta-summarization tool. It takes an existing summary and uses a rigid Oulipian rule to transform it, often generating surreal and surprisingly insightful new metaphors. The goal is not factual representation but creative exploration of the summary's conceptual space.
15. The N+7 Conceptual Summary
Prompt: "Take the following simple summary of the text: '[Insert a straightforward, one-sentence summary here]'. Now, apply the Oulipian N+7 technique: using a standard English dictionary, replace every noun in that sentence with the seventh noun that follows it. Present the original sentence and the transformed sentence. Finally, write a brief analysis of any interesting new meanings or metaphors that emerged from the transformation."
Format Suggestion: A three-part response: Original Sentence, Transformed Sentence, and Analysis. This prompt uses the N+7 rule 9 to defamiliarize the summary and spark new interpretations.
Example:
Source Text: An essay on the power of literature.
Original Sentence: "The author argues that great books provide a window into the human soul."
Transformed Sentence: "The authority argues that great bootlaces provide a windmill into the human sound."
Analysis: "The transformation creates several evocative metaphors. Replacing 'author' with 'authority' subtly shifts the tone from creative expression to a more dogmatic declaration. The phrase 'great bootlaces' is particularly striking; it suggests that literature's power lies in its ability to tie together disparate ideas or secure our understanding. The most powerful change is from 'window' to 'windmill,' which reframes literature not as a passive portal for viewing the 'soul' (now 'sound'), but as an active engine that harnesses the unseen forces of human experience to generate power, energy, and motion."
Numerical and Logical Constraint Prompts
These prompts use numerical or logical rules to shape the summary, forcing the model to prioritize and distill information in a structured, hierarchical manner.
16. The Decreasing Word Count Summary
Prompt: "Summarize the core argument of the provided text in exactly four sentences. The first sentence must be no more than 30 words. The second sentence must be no more than 20 words. The third sentence must be no more than 10 words. The final sentence must be exactly 5 words."
Format Suggestion: A single paragraph of four sentences. This "funnel" or "inverted pyramid" constraint compels the model to progressively refine its summary, ending with the most distilled essence of the original text.12
Example:
Source Text: A business article about adapting to market changes.
Generated Summary: "The report argues that companies must abandon rigid long-term planning in favor of a more agile and responsive approach to navigate today's volatile and unpredictable economic landscape. This requires investing in real-time data analytics and cross-functional teams. Success depends on organizational flexibility. Adapt or become irrelevant."
Part III: Perspective, Persona, and Audience-Centric Prompts
A single source of information can yield vastly different summaries depending on the reader's perspective, expertise, and objective. This section explores prompts that leverage an LLM's remarkable ability to adopt specific personas and tailor information for different audiences.7 By instructing the model to summarize from a particular viewpoint, the user can transform a neutral text into a targeted analysis, a strategic briefing, or a critical evaluation. This process moves beyond simply reporting what a text says to interpreting its meaning and implications for a specific context. The summary becomes an act of translation, not just from long to short, but from a general message to a specific, actionable insight.
Role-Playing Prompts
These prompts instruct the model to inhabit a character or role, complete with its own biases, priorities, and vocabulary. The summarization task is reframed through the lens of this persona.
17. The Skeptic's Summary
Prompt: "Read the following text and summarize it from the perspective of a highly critical skeptic or a devil's advocate. Do not just summarize the main points; identify the central claims and then critically evaluate them. Highlight the weakest arguments, any unstated assumptions, potential logical fallacies, or areas where the evidence seems insufficient."
Format Suggestion: A bulleted list or a paragraph that clearly separates the author's claims from the skeptic's critique. This is invaluable for risk assessment, vetting business proposals, or conducting academic peer review.
Example:
Source Text: A press release announcing a new "revolutionary" productivity app.
Generated Summary: "The announcement claims the 'SynergyMax' app will increase workplace productivity by 50% using an AI-driven task-prioritization engine. However, this central claim rests on several questionable assumptions. First, the 50% figure is derived from an internal, unaudited case study of a single, unnamed company, making the result impossible to verify and likely a best-case scenario. Second, the text assumes that task prioritization is the primary bottleneck for productivity, ignoring other critical factors like workplace culture, communication overhead, and resource availability. Finally, the term 'AI-driven' is used without any specific detail, suggesting it may be more of a marketing buzzword than a descriptor of a genuinely novel technology."
18. The CEO's Briefing
Prompt: "Summarize this detailed market analysis report as a one-paragraph 'Bottom Line Up Front' (BLUF) briefing for a busy CEO. The summary must be under 150 words. Focus exclusively on the most critical strategic implications, key opportunities, competitive threats, and recommended actions. Omit all methodological details and historical data."
Format Suggestion: A single, dense paragraph starting with the most important takeaway. This format is designed for high-level executive communication where time is the most valuable resource.
Example:
Source Text: A 30-page report on the electric vehicle market.
Generated Summary: "The key takeaway is that the sub-$30k EV segment represents our single largest growth opportunity, with competitor X's supply chain issues creating a 12-month window for us to capture significant market share. We must immediately accelerate the launch of our 'Model E' prototype to capitalize on this. The primary threat is the new battery technology from startup Y, which could render our current platform obsolete within three years. Recommendation: Form a dedicated team to fast-track 'Model E' production and simultaneously begin R&D on our own next-generation battery to mitigate the long-term threat from Y. The financial models indicate a potential 25% revenue increase if we act within the next quarter."
19. The Historian's Perspective
Prompt: "Summarize this contemporary news article about [a specific event] from the perspective of a historian writing a textbook 50 years in the future. Do not just recount the events. Explain the event's broader historical significance, its root causes, and its long-term consequences as they would appear with the benefit of hindsight."
Format Suggestion: An academic, encyclopedic paragraph. This prompt encourages the model to synthesize information and analyze its long-term impact, turning a simple news report into a deeper analysis.
Example:
Source Text: A 2024 news article about the first international treaty on AI regulation.
Generated Summary: "The 2024 'Geneva Accords on AI,' while initially seen as a landmark diplomatic achievement, is now understood by historians as a pivotal yet ultimately flawed first attempt to govern a nascent technology. The treaty was significant for establishing the first global consensus on banning autonomous lethal weapons and creating frameworks for data transparency. However, its historical legacy is defined by its critical omissions. By failing to adequately address the issues of algorithmic sovereignty and the monopolistic control of foundational models by a few corporations, the Accords inadvertently set the stage for the 'Data Cold War' of the 2030s, which saw nations diverge into competing, state-controlled AI ecosystems."
Audience-Specific Format Prompts
These prompts combine a persona with a specific communication format, requiring the model to understand not only the content and the audience, but also the conventions of the target medium.
20. The Press Release Summary
Prompt: "Convert the key findings of this dense technical report into a professional press release. The press release must include: a compelling headline, a dateline (City, State – Date), an introductory paragraph summarizing the key announcement, 2-3 subsequent paragraphs providing more detail and context, and a concluding paragraph with a boilerplate 'About the Company' section. Include one powerful, fabricated quote from a hypothetical 'Dr. Jane Smith, Lead Researcher'."
Format Suggestion: A standard press release format. This is a practical tool for translating scientific or business achievements into publicly consumable content.13
Example:
Source Text: A research paper on a new drought-resistant crop.
Generated Summary:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HEADLINE: Agrotech Innovators Announce Breakthrough 'HydraWheat' Crop Capable of Thriving with 50% Less Water
PALO ALTO, CA – – Agrotech Dynamics today unveiled a groundbreaking new wheat variety, 'HydraWheat,' engineered to produce high yields while consuming up to 50% less water than conventional strains. This development represents a major step forward in securing global food supplies in the face of increasing climate volatility and water scarcity.
The new strain incorporates a novel gene identified from a rare desert grass, which dramatically enhances the plant's root system and its ability to retain moisture in arid conditions. In multi-year field trials conducted in drought-prone regions, HydraWheat consistently outperformed standard varieties, maintaining crop yields even during periods of severe water stress.
"This isn't just an incremental improvement; it's a paradigm shift for dryland agriculture," said Dr. Jane Smith, Lead Researcher at Agrotech Dynamics. "We are providing farmers with a vital tool that is not only more resilient to climate change but also more economically viable, significantly reducing irrigation costs."
About Agrotech Dynamics: Agrotech Dynamics is a leading agricultural biotechnology company dedicated to developing innovative solutions for sustainable farming and global food security.
21. The Social Media Thread Summary
Prompt: "Summarize this long-form article as a 5-part thread for the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). Each part must be under 280 characters. The first tweet must be a compelling hook to grab attention. The thread should use relevant hashtags and the final tweet should pose a question to encourage engagement."
Format Suggestion: Five numbered "tweets." This prompt forces extreme conciseness and requires an understanding of social media engagement tactics.
Example:
Source Text: An article about the psychology of procrastination.
Generated Summary:
1/5: Ever wonder why you put things off, even when you know it's a bad idea? It's not about laziness. The real reason is fascinating, and it's all about how your brain handles threats. 🧵 #Procrastination #Psychology
2/5: Your brain's limbic system (the emotional part) sees a difficult task as a threat and wants to escape. It craves the immediate relief of doing something else, like scrolling here. This is the amygdala hijack in action.
3/5: The prefrontal cortex (your 'adult' brain) knows you should do the task, but the limbic system's immediate 'feel-good' signal is often stronger. Procrastination is essentially an emotional regulation problem, not a time management one.
4/5: The key to beating it? Break the task into tiny, non-threatening steps. The goal is to make the first step so easy that your brain doesn't see it as a danger. "Just open the document" is a great start. #Productivity
5/5: So, the battle isn't you vs. the clock, it's you vs. your own brain's threat response. What's the one tiny, non-scary step you could take on a task you've been avoiding right now?
Comparative and Dialectical Prompts
These prompts instruct the model to analyze a text from multiple, often opposing, viewpoints simultaneously. This creates a balanced and nuanced summary that exposes the complexities and debates within a topic.
22. The "Believer vs. Doubter" Summary
Prompt: "Provide two distinct summaries of the attached article, each in its own paragraph. The first summary should be written from the perspective of a 'believer' who fully accepts the author's arguments and conclusions.14 The second summary must be written from the perspective of a 'doubter' who critically questions the evidence, logic, and motivations behind the text.14"
Format Suggestion: Two separate paragraphs, clearly labeled "Believer's Summary" and "Doubter's Summary." This is an excellent method for deep reading and critical thinking exercises.15
Example:
Source Text: An opinion piece advocating for a four-day work week.
Generated Summary:
Believer's Summary: The article compellingly argues that a four-day work week is a crucial evolution in modern work, leading to demonstrably higher employee productivity, improved mental health, and reduced operational costs. By presenting powerful case studies from companies that have successfully made the transition, the author proves that focusing on output rather than hours is the key to a more efficient and humane workplace.
Doubter's Summary: The author's enthusiastic advocacy for a four-day work week relies heavily on cherry-picked, anecdotal evidence from a handful of small tech companies, ignoring the vast complexities of implementing such a model in sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, or customer service. The piece conveniently glosses over potential downsides, such as increased stress from compressed schedules and the logistical challenges of maintaining client-facing operations, presenting a utopian vision without a realistic roadmap for broad adoption.
23. The Pro/Con Tabular Summary
Prompt: "Analyze the arguments presented in the provided text regarding [a central topic or proposal]. Summarize these arguments in a two-column Markdown table. The left column should be labeled 'Arguments For (Pros)' and should list all the points in favor of the proposal. The right column should be labeled 'Arguments Against (Cons)' and should list all the counterarguments or criticisms mentioned."
Format Suggestion: A Markdown table. This format provides a highly scannable and balanced overview of a debate, making it ideal for briefing documents and decision-making support.16
Example:
Source Text: An article debating the merits of urban densification policies.
Generated Summary:
Multi-POV Narrative Summary
This advanced technique applies a literary device from fiction writing to the task of summarization. It requires the model to infer the internal states and perspectives of different actors within a text and present the summary as a narrative told from their alternating viewpoints.
24. The Multi-Character Scene Summary
Prompt: "Summarize the key events of the attached text, which describes [a business negotiation, a political debate, a historical event], as a short narrative scene. The scene should be written from the alternating first-person points of view of the two main parties involved (e.g., 'Party A' and 'Party B'). Show their different interpretations of the same events, their goals, and their hidden motivations."
Format Suggestion: A short story format, with clear indicators (e.g., character names as headings) for each point-of-view shift. This is highly effective for summarizing conflicts, negotiations, or complex interpersonal dynamics where understanding perspective is crucial.17
Example:
Source Text: A business news report about a tense merger negotiation between 'Acme Corp' and 'Global Tech'.
Generated Summary:
John (CEO, Acme Corp)
I sat across the polished table, keeping my expression neutral. They thought they had us cornered, that our recent market dip made us desperate. I let them talk, outlining their "generous" offer. What they didn't understand was that their offer wasn't just about the money; it was about gutting our research division—the very soul of my company. I needed their capital, but I wasn't about to let them turn my life's work into just another brand on their portfolio. My goal was simple: secure the funding, but protect my team at all costs. I just had to make them think the money was all that mattered.
Susan (Head of M&A, Global Tech)
John was playing his part well—the proud founder, wounded but stoic. Our data showed Acme was three months from a liquidity crisis. He needed this deal. I laid out the terms, emphasizing the premium we were paying on their valuation. The sticking point, as expected, was R&D. He saw it as his legacy; I saw it as a redundant cost center, a drain on the efficiency we could bring. My objective was clear: acquire their customer base and IP, then integrate their operations into our more efficient structure. I could see the conflict in his eyes. He was calculating. I'd give him a small concession on R&D headcount, just enough to let him feel like he'd won something. The deal was already done; he just didn't know it yet.
Part IV: Structural and Visual Format Transformation
The conventional paragraph, while versatile, is often not the most effective format for conveying summarized information. For many professional applications, the true value of a summary lies in its ability to be immediately scannable, comparable, and actionable. This section presents prompts that redefine summarization as a task of data structuring. Instead of merely condensing text, these prompts instruct the LLM to analyze the source material through a specific analytical framework (like a SWOT analysis) and then output the information in a structured, often visual, format. This approach transforms the LLM from a simple text generator into an automated analyst, capable of turning unstructured prose into organized data structures like tables, outlines for infographics, or presentation slide decks. This is a higher-order cognitive task that moves beyond condensation to synthesis and presentation design.13
Tabular and Matrix Summaries
These prompts leverage the model's ability to classify information and organize it into rows and columns, creating dense, easily digestible summaries for comparison and decision-making.
25. The SWOT Analysis Summary
Prompt: "Read the provided business report or case study about [Company/Product]. Analyze its contents and summarize them in the form of a SWOT analysis. Present the output as a four-quadrant Markdown table with the headings: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Each quadrant should contain 3-5 bullet points extracted and inferred from the text."
Format Suggestion: A 2x2 Markdown table. This is a standard business analysis tool, and this prompt automates its creation from unstructured text, making it ideal for competitive analysis and strategic planning.18
Example:
Source Text: An annual report for a coffee company.
Generated Summary:
26. The Comparative Feature Matrix
Prompt: "Read the following text comparing. Summarize the information in a feature comparison matrix. The rows should be the key features discussed (e.g., Price, Battery Life, Screen Quality). The columns should be the products. Fill the cells with the specific data or a brief qualitative description from the text."
Format Suggestion: A Markdown table. This is one of the most efficient ways to summarize competitive product information, perfect for purchasing decisions or market research.
Example:
Source Text: A tech review website's article on three new smartphones.
Generated Summary:
27. The Decision Matrix Summary
Prompt: "The following document outlines several proposed solutions to a problem. Summarize these options into a weighted decision matrix. List the options as rows. For the columns, use the following decision criteria and their assigned weights:,,. Score each option from 1 (low) to 5 (high) for each criterion based on the information in the text. Add a final 'Total Score' column."
Format Suggestion: A Markdown table. This prompt turns a qualitative discussion into a quantitative, data-driven decision tool, ideal for summarizing strategy meetings or option analysis papers.
Example:
Source Text: A memo discussing three potential new office locations.
Prompt Criteria: Cost (50%), Employee Access (30%), Scalability (20%).
Generated Summary:
Visual and Presentation-Oriented Summaries
These prompts bridge the gap between text summarization and information design. They instruct the model to not only extract key information but also to structure it as a blueprint for a visual artifact like an infographic or a presentation.
28. The Infographic Outline
Prompt: "Summarize the key statistics, findings, and takeaways from the attached article as a structured outline for a vertical infographic. The outline should have at least four sections with clear headings (e.g., 'The Hooking Problem,' 'Stunning Statistic #1,' 'The Core Insight,' 'The Call to Action'). Under each heading, provide 2-3 bullet points with specific data and a suggestion for a relevant, simple icon (e.g., 'Icon: a bar chart', 'Icon: a lightbulb')."
Format Suggestion: A nested bulleted list. The output is not the infographic itself, but a detailed brief for a graphic designer, making the process of content creation far more efficient.13
Example:
Source Text: A report on global plastic waste.
Generated Summary:
Section 1: The Ocean is Drowning in Plastic (Icon: a sad Earth)
Headline: By 2050, our oceans could contain more plastic than fish by weight.
Hook: We produce over 380 million tons of plastic every year, and half of it is for single-use purposes.
Section 2: The Shocking Numbers (Icon: an exploding bar chart)
Key Stat: 8 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans annually. That's a garbage truck's worth every single minute.
Supporting Stat: Only 9% of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled.
Section 3: The Main Culprits (Icon: a plastic bottle, a straw, a bag)
Finding: The top sources of plastic pollution are food wrappers, beverage bottles, and plastic bags.
Insight: Microplastics, tiny particles from larger items, are now found in our water, soil, and even the air we breathe.
Section 4: What Can You Do? (Icon: a recycling symbol with a heart)
Call to Action 1: Reduce your use of single-use plastics.
Call to Action 2: Support policies that promote a circular economy.
Call to Action 3: Participate in local cleanup initiatives.
29. The Dashboard Component Summary
Prompt: "Summarize the attached monthly performance report by identifying the 4 most critical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that should be displayed on an executive dashboard. For each KPI, specify: 1. The KPI Name, 2. The specific data point/value, 3. The recommended visualization type (e.g., line graph, pie chart, single number with trend arrow), and 4. A one-sentence insight it reveals."
Format Suggestion: A structured list with clear labels for each of the four components. This prompt automates the first step of business intelligence analysis: identifying what matters from a sea of data.16
Example:
Source Text: A company's Q3 sales and marketing report.
Generated Summary:
1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Data Point: $125.50
Visualization: Single number with a red upward trend arrow (indicating it's worse than last quarter).
Insight: CAC increased by 15% this quarter, suggesting our new ad campaigns are less efficient than previous ones.
2. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
Data Point: $1.2M
Visualization: Line graph showing growth over the past 12 months.
Insight: While MRR continues to grow steadily, the rate of growth has slowed for the second consecutive quarter.
3. Customer Churn Rate
Data Point: 3.5%
Visualization: Gauge chart with 'Good', 'Warning', 'Critical' zones.
Insight: Churn is up from 2.8% and is entering the 'Warning' zone, driven by cancellations from our oldest customer cohort.
4. Lead Source Breakdown
Data Point: Organic (45%), Paid (30%), Referral (20%), Other (5%).
Visualization: Pie chart.
Insight: Our reliance on organic search is increasing, highlighting a potential risk if search engine algorithms change.
30. The Presentation Slide Deck
Prompt: "Summarize this lengthy document as a concise 5-slide presentation outline for a [specify audience, e.g., board meeting, new employee orientation]. For each of the 5 slides, provide: a compelling slide title, 3-4 key bullet points in clear, concise language, and a brief suggestion for a powerful visual (e.g., 'a chart showing X', 'a photo of Y', 'a diagram of Z')."
Format Suggestion: A numbered list, where each number represents a slide. This prompt rapidly storyboards a presentation, providing a solid structure for the presenter to build upon.18
Example:
Source Text: A project proposal for a new mobile application.
Generated Summary:
Slide 1: The Opportunity: Tapping into the Creator Economy
Title: The Untapped Market for Monetization Tools
Bullet Points:
The creator economy is valued at over $100 billion but is dominated by a few platforms.
Emerging creators lack simple, direct tools to monetize their audience.
Our solution, 'ConnectApp,' provides a direct link between creators and their supporters.
Visual: A graph showing the exponential growth of the creator economy.
Slide 2: Introducing 'ConnectApp': Your Personal Digital Storefront
Title: What is ConnectApp?
Bullet Points:
A mobile-first platform for creators to sell digital products, services, and subscriptions.
Integrates seamlessly with all major social media platforms.
Handles payments, delivery, and customer support automatically.
Visual: A clean UI mockup of the app's main dashboard.
Slide 3: Our Unique Value Proposition
Title: Why We Win
Bullet Points:
Lowest transaction fees in the market (5% vs. industry average of 15-30%).
Creator owns their audience data and customer relationships.
Focus on simplicity: a creator can set up a product in under 5 minutes.
Visual: A competitive matrix comparing ConnectApp's fees to competitors.
Slide 4: The Go-to-Market Strategy
Title: How We'll Reach Our First 10,000 Creators
Bullet Points:
Phase 1: Target niche creators in underserved verticals (e.g., education, wellness).
Phase 2: Influencer marketing campaign with established mid-tier creators.
Phase 3: Launch a referral program to drive viral growth.
Visual: A timeline roadmap illustrating the three phases.
Slide 5: The Ask & Vision
Title: The Future is Direct-to-Creator
Bullet Points:
We are seeking $2 million in seed funding to scale our engineering team and launch our marketing campaign.
Our vision is to become the essential financial toolkit for the next generation of digital entrepreneurs.
Join us in empowering the independent creator.
Visual: A powerful image of a diverse group of creators.
Script and Sequential Summaries
These prompts summarize information by transforming it into a time-based or sequential narrative, such as a video script or a comic strip. This requires the model to think about pacing, storytelling, and the interplay between visual and textual information.
31. The Explainer Video Script
Prompt: "Summarize this complex technical or scientific topic in the form of a script for a 90-second animated explainer video. The script should be formatted in a two-column table. The left column, 'Visual Cues,' should describe the simple animations or graphics on screen. The right column, 'Voiceover Narration,' should contain the spoken text. The tone should be engaging and easy to understand."
Format Suggestion: A Markdown table with two columns. This format is ready to be handed off to an animator and voiceover artist, drastically speeding up content production.13
Example:
Source Text: An explanation of how blockchain technology works.
Generated Summary:
32. The Comic Strip Summary
Prompt: "Summarize the main narrative or process described in the text as a 4-panel comic strip. For each panel, provide: 1. A 'Panel Number', 2. A brief 'Panel Description' of the visual action, and 3. The 'Caption/Dialogue' text that should appear in that panel."
Format Suggestion: A structured list for each panel. This highly abstractive task forces the model to identify the most visually compelling moments or steps in a narrative and condense them into a simple, powerful sequence.13
Example:
Source Text: A historical account of the discovery of penicillin.
Generated Summary:
Panel 1
Description: A cluttered 1928 laboratory. Scientist ALEXANDER FLEMING is leaving for vacation, looking tired. He leaves a stack of petri dishes on his bench.
Caption: "Finally, a holiday! These bacteria cultures can wait..."
Panel 2
Description: Fleming returns to his lab, looking refreshed. He picks up a petri dish and squints at it with a puzzled expression. A strange blue-green mold is growing in one dish, and the bacteria around it have vanished.
Caption: "That's odd... The bacteria near this mold are... gone!"
Panel 3
Description: A close-up shot of the petri dish. An invisible "zone of inhibition" is clearly visible around the mold, showing a clear area where no bacteria can grow.
Dialogue (thought bubble): "This mold is producing something that kills bacteria! A 'mold juice'..."
Panel 4
Description: A modern hospital room. A doctor is administering an IV drip to a healthy-looking patient. The IV bag is labeled "Penicillin."
Caption: "And that 'mold juice,' later named Penicillin, would go on to save millions of lives. A lucky accident that changed medicine forever."
Part V: Narrative and Metaphorical Summarization
This final section delves into the most sophisticated and abstractive forms of summarization. The prompts here are designed to move beyond the literal content of a text to capture its deep structure, its emotional resonance, and its core conceptual meaning. This is achieved by mapping the information onto familiar narrative frameworks or by distilling its entire argument into a single, powerful metaphor. This process reflects a profound level of understanding, as the ability to create an apt analogy or metaphor is a hallmark of human-like intelligence and reasoning.21 Research demonstrates that the metaphor used to frame a complex issue, such as describing crime as a "virus" versus a "beast," fundamentally alters how people reason about it and the solutions they propose.23 A well-chosen metaphor, therefore, is not merely a stylistic flourish; it is the ultimate abstractive summary, a highly compressed model of the text's meaning, implications, and worldview.
Narrative Arc Prompts
These prompts instruct the model to organize the information from a text, even a non-narrative one, into a classic storytelling structure. This makes complex histories, processes, or biographies more engaging, memorable, and easier to understand.
33. The Hero's Journey Summary
Prompt: "Summarize the provided text, which describes the history of a person, company, or project, by structuring it according to the key stages of the 'Hero's Journey' narrative archetype. Identify and describe the events or phases in the text that correspond to at least five of the following stages: The Ordinary World, The Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Meeting the Mentor, Crossing the Threshold, Tests, Allies, and Enemies, The Ordeal, The Reward, and The Road Back."
Format Suggestion: A numbered or bulleted list, with each item corresponding to a stage of the Hero's Journey. This is a powerful tool for creating compelling brand stories or biographical summaries.
Example:
Source Text: A biography of Steve Jobs and the founding of Apple.
Generated Summary:
1. The Ordinary World: Steve Jobs was a college dropout in California, exploring counter-culture and Eastern mysticism, seemingly aimless but deeply curious about design and technology.
2. The Call to Adventure: The emergence of the Homebrew Computer Club and the first microprocessors presented the opportunity to create a personal computer for everyone, not just hobbyists.
3. Meeting the Mentor: Steve Wozniak, with his brilliant engineering skills, served as the technical mentor who could build the machine that Jobs envisioned.
4. Crossing the Threshold: Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer in a garage, committing fully to the risky venture of building and selling the Apple I.
5. The Ordeal: After initial success, Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985, a moment of profound failure and exile that would later prove transformative.
6. The Reward (and The Road Back): His return to a nearly bankrupt Apple in 1997, armed with the knowledge gained from his time at NeXT and Pixar, allowed him to lead one of the greatest corporate turnarounds in history, culminating in the launch of the iMac, iPod, and iPhone.
34. Freytag's Pyramid Summary
Prompt: "Analyze the provided case study of a project, business venture, or historical event. Structure your summary using the five acts of Freytag's Pyramid, a classic dramatic structure. Describe the parts of the case study that correspond to: 1. Exposition (setting the scene), 2. Rising Action (building conflict/challenges), 3. Climax (the major turning point), 4. Falling Action (the immediate consequences), and 5. Dénouement (the final outcome and new reality)."
Format Suggestion: Five distinct paragraphs, each labeled with a stage of Freytag's Pyramid. This is excellent for analyzing failures or successes in a narrative format to extract clear lessons.24
Example:
Source Text: A post-mortem analysis of the failed "Quibi" streaming service.
Generated Summary:
1. Exposition: Quibi launched in 2020 with $1.75 billion in funding and veteran Hollywood and tech leadership, aiming to revolutionize mobile entertainment with high-quality, short-form "quick bites" of content.
2. Rising Action: Despite a massive marketing budget, the service struggled to gain traction. Its content was designed for on-the-go viewing, but it launched during the COVID-19 pandemic when its target audience was at home with access to large-screen TVs. The app also lacked basic social sharing features, hindering viral growth.
3. Climax: Six months after its highly publicized launch, the company's leadership held a critical meeting where internal data revealed catastrophic subscription and viewership numbers, making it clear that the initial strategy had fundamentally failed and the company was burning through cash at an unsustainable rate.
4. Falling Action: Following the meeting, the company desperately attempted to pivot, exploring options to sell its content library or the entire company to rivals like Facebook and NBCUniversal, but found no interested buyers.
5. Dénouement: Quibi officially announced it was shutting down just over six months after its launch, returning the remaining capital to investors. Its failure became a widely cited cautionary tale in the tech and media industries about the dangers of misreading consumer habits and launching a product disconnected from its market's reality.
Character-Driven Summaries
These prompts use principles of character theory to frame a summary, assigning roles and archetypes to the actors in a text. This humanizes the information and focuses the summary on motivations, relationships, and conflicts.
35. The Protagonist/Antagonist Summary
Prompt: "Summarize the competitive dynamic described in this market report as a short story. Cast [Our Company] as the 'Protagonist' and [Main Competitor] as the 'Antagonist.' Describe the central conflict (the market they are fighting for), the key strategic moves each has made, and the current state of their struggle."
Format Suggestion: A short, narrative paragraph. This is a highly engaging way to present competitive intelligence, transforming dry data into a compelling drama.
Example:
Source Text: A report on the cloud computing market.
Prompt Roles: Protagonist: Microsoft Azure, Antagonist: Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Generated Summary: "In the sprawling kingdom of the cloud, the established ruler, AWS, has long held sway with its vast infrastructure and early-mover advantage. But the protagonist, Microsoft Azure, has mounted a formidable challenge. The central conflict is the battle for the lucrative enterprise market. While AWS, the antagonist, boasts a larger share, Azure has cleverly used its deep-rooted legacy with corporate clients, bundling cloud services with its ubiquitous Office and Windows software. Azure's key move was launching its Hybrid Cloud solution, a bridge for cautious companies still tied to on-premise servers. AWS has countered by aggressively cutting prices and expanding its suite of specialized services. The struggle is now at a tense stalemate, with Azure steadily gaining ground in the enterprise heartlands while AWS remains the dominant force overall."
36. The Archetype Summary
Prompt: "Analyze the key figure described in this biographical text. Summarize their life, personality, and impact by identifying their primary character archetype (e.g., The Rebel, The Sage, The Jester, The Explorer, The Ruler). Begin by stating the archetype, and then explain in a paragraph how their key decisions and actions throughout their life fit this archetypal pattern."
Format Suggestion: A single paragraph starting with the chosen archetype. This prompt provides a powerful psychological lens for understanding and summarizing an individual's impact.24
Example:
Source Text: A biography of scientist Marie Curie.
Generated Summary: "Marie Curie's life perfectly embodies the archetype of The Sage. Her primary motivation was not fame or fortune, but the relentless pursuit of knowledge and truth. This was demonstrated by her decision to conduct her groundbreaking research on radioactivity in a primitive, under-funded shed, driven purely by scientific curiosity. She faced immense obstacles as a woman in a male-dominated field, yet her focus remained on the integrity of her work, not personal battles. True to the Sage archetype, she shared her knowledge freely, choosing not to patent the radium isolation process so that the scientific community could research it unhindered. Her ultimate legacy is one of enlightenment, leaving behind a new field of physics and two Nobel prizes that illuminated the hidden structure of the universe."
Analogy and Metaphor Generation Prompts
These are the most purely abstractive prompts, requiring the model to perform a deep structural analysis of a text and map its core concepts onto an entirely different domain. The goal is to produce a summary that illuminates the original topic in a new and profound way.
37. The Explanatory Analogy
Prompt: "The provided text explains the complex process of [e.g., machine learning model training]. Generate a summary of this process in the form of an extended analogy that a non-expert could easily understand. Begin the summary with the phrase ' is like...' and carry the analogy through the entire explanation."
Format Suggestion: A single paragraph built around a central analogy. This is one of the most effective techniques for making complex ideas accessible and memorable.21
Example:
Source Text: An article explaining how a Large Language Model is trained.
Generated Summary: "Training a Large Language Model is like teaching a student to become a grand librarian for a library containing every book ever written. First is the 'pre-training' phase, where the student reads the entire library, not to memorize it, but to learn the rules of grammar, context, and how ideas connect. Then comes the 'fine-tuning' phase, where you give the librarian specific tasks, like 'summarize this book' or 'answer questions about that chapter,' and correct their mistakes. You do this over and over, rewarding them for good answers. Eventually, the librarian becomes so good at understanding the patterns in language that they can not only find any information but also write new, coherent paragraphs of their own, perfectly in the style of the books they've learned from."
38. The Strategic Metaphor
Prompt: "Summarize this company's business strategy, as described in the text, using a single, powerful metaphor. Is their strategy best described as a 'blitzkrieg,' a 'guerilla war,' a 'slow-and-steady marathon,' a 'building a cathedral,' or something else entirely? State the metaphor and then write a paragraph justifying your choice by connecting specific actions from the text to the elements of the metaphor."
Format Suggestion: A two-part response: the chosen metaphor, followed by a paragraph of justification. This prompt forces a holistic, conceptual judgment on a strategy rather than a simple description of its parts.23
Example:
Source Text: A case study of Airbnb's early growth strategy.
Generated Summary:
Metaphor: A "Guerilla War" against the hotel industry.
Justification: Airbnb's strategy was not a direct, conventional assault on the hotel industry. Instead, it operated like a guerilla force. It avoided heavily regulated "strongholds" (hotel districts) and instead "infiltrated" residential neighborhoods, an area where traditional hospitality laws didn't apply. Its "soldiers" were not a professional army but a distributed network of ordinary homeowners. Its key tactic, the infamous Craigslist integration, was a classic guerilla move—exploiting the enemy's own communication channels to recruit and spread its message. It didn't try to win by building bigger forts (hotels), but by being more agile, adaptable, and deeply embedded in the local terrain.
39. The Core Metaphor Distillation
Prompt: "Read the attached text carefully. What is the single most powerful, unstated metaphor that underlies and captures the essence of the author's main argument? State the metaphor explicitly (e.g., 'The argument is a journey') and then explain in one paragraph why this metaphor is a fitting summary of the text's structure, tone, and conclusion."
Format Suggestion: A single paragraph that identifies and explains the implicit metaphor. This is an advanced analytical task that requires the model to read between the lines and understand the conceptual framework of an argument.
Example:
Source Text: An essay arguing for the importance of biodiversity.
Generated Summary: "The unstated metaphor that best summarizes the author's argument is that the ecosystem is a Jenga tower. The author doesn't present the loss of a single species as a standalone tragedy, but as the removal of a block from an increasingly precarious structure. The tone is one of rising tension, as each removed species—each Jenga block pulled—is described as increasing the instability of the whole. The argument's conclusion is not a sudden crash, but a warning of impending collapse, emphasizing that the tower's structural integrity depends on every single, interconnected piece, and we don't know which removed block will be the one that causes the entire system to fall."
40. The Metaphorical Reframing
Prompt: "The author of the provided text uses the primary metaphor of '[Metaphor A]' to describe [the central topic]. Your task is to summarize the author's key points, but you must reframe the entire argument using the alternative metaphor of ''. Explain how this new metaphorical frame changes the emphasis of the summary and what new insights it might reveal."
Format Suggestion: A two-paragraph response. The first paragraph presents the summary using the new metaphor. The second paragraph analyzes the effect of the reframing. This is arguably the most advanced summarization prompt, as it requires the model to not only understand an argument but to deconstruct and reconstruct it through a different conceptual lens.23
Example:
Source Text: An article describing corporate data as "the new oil."
Prompt Metaphors: Metaphor A: "Data is the new oil." Metaphor B: "Data is the new soil."
Generated Summary:
Summary using 'Data is the new soil': In today's economy, corporate data serves as the fertile soil from which business value grows. Companies must first cultivate this soil by collecting clean, relevant information. They then plant "seeds" in the form of business questions or machine learning models. With careful tending—analysis and enrichment—these seeds sprout into insights that can be harvested for improved customer experiences and new product lines. A company's long-term health depends not on simply possessing the soil, but on its ability to sustainably cultivate it, enrich it over time, and rotate its "crops" to avoid depleting its value.
Analysis of Reframing: Shifting the metaphor from "oil" to "soil" fundamentally changes the strategic emphasis. The "oil" metaphor implies that data is a finite resource to be extracted, refined, and burned for profit, suggesting a one-time, extractive process. The "soil" metaphor, by contrast, frames data as a renewable, living asset that requires cultivation, nurturing, and long-term stewardship. This reframing shifts the focus from short-term exploitation to sustainable growth, highlighting the importance of data quality (soil health), continuous enrichment, and the idea that data's value can be replenished and enhanced over time, rather than simply depleted.
Conclusion: Summarization as a Creative and Analytical Act
The 40 techniques detailed in this compendium demonstrate a fundamental evolution in the practice of text summarization. Powered by the semantic prowess of modern transformer architectures, the task has transcended its origins as a mechanical process of information reduction. Advanced summarization, steered by innovative prompting, has become a dynamic and multifaceted discipline that blends analysis with creativity, and precision with perspective.
The journey through these prompts reveals a clear trajectory. It begins with foundational techniques that grant granular control over the technical composition of a summary, allowing users to precisely blend extractive fidelity with abstractive fluency. It then progresses into the realm of constraints, where Oulipian rules force language models to forge novel linguistic paths, often revealing the essence of a text in unexpected ways. The exploration of persona and perspective transforms the summary from a neutral report into a targeted, audience-specific communication tool. The shift to structural and visual formats redefines summarization as a text-to-data-structure process, turning unstructured prose into actionable analytical artifacts like dashboards and decision matrices. Finally, the use of narrative and metaphor represents the pinnacle of abstractive capability, distilling complex arguments not into shorter sentences, but into more profound and resonant conceptual models.
The central conclusion is that the act of prompting for a summary is no longer a simple command but a strategic choice. The right prompt can transform a single source document into a multitude of valuable assets: a critical analysis for a skeptic, a high-level briefing for an executive, a compelling story for a marketing campaign, or a powerful metaphor to frame a strategic debate. Summarization, in this advanced form, is an act of interpretation and transformation.
Looking forward, the principles outlined here will only become more critical. As language models become multi-modal, the definition of a "summary" will continue to expand. A future prompt might ask a model to "summarize this business plan as a 30-second video pitch" or "summarize this scientific paper as an interactive 3D diagram." The core skill will remain the same: the ability to craft a precise set of instructions that guides a powerful generative model to distill complexity, adopt a perspective, and transform information into its most effective and insightful form. The prompt engineer is not merely a user of technology, but a director of meaning, and summarization is their most versatile tool.
Appendix: The Prompt Matrix
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