Explain a big idea 5 ways.
A story, an analogy, an example, a visual, and a direct explanation can reveal different parts of the same big idea.
Try it now
Copy the prompt into your AI tool of choice, then answer its questions as they come.
Paste it into any AI chat to start. For most people, this is all you need.
Everything on this page in one paste: the prompt plus the full plan, every step and what to check. Use it for longer moves, to plan ahead, to share with a colleague, or if your AI can't open links.
How it goes
What the AI will do
- Investigate the idea and the audience’s actual questions, then create five genuinely different explanations.
- Check each explanation for clarity and fidelity, including where an analogy or visual could mislead.
What to have ready
- The idea in rough words, a source, or an example; the audience or occasion if you already know it.
Where you come in
- Clarify the meaning or audience where necessary, then react to the explanations and choose what is most useful.
What you'll get
You have five complete explanations of the same idea, each suited to the audience and ready to use or adapt, with a recommendation about where each works best.
You're done when
You have five complete explanations of the same idea, each suited to the audience and ready to use or adapt, with a recommendation about where each works best.
These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result. ### Start with the activity and the user's context Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear. Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them. ### Check the capabilities needed for this work Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit. When useful access is missing: - Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help. - Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot. - If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response. - Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available. ### Ask focused questions and respect the answers Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful. Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements. ### Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material. Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work: - Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role. - Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations. - Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately. ### Produce, check, and revise the result Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them. Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result. Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized. Help me explain one big idea five genuinely different ways. Preserve its substance while finding different routes to understanding for the people who need it. ### 1. Understand the idea and the audience Start with my rough description, source material, or example. Identify the central claim or mechanism, the important relationships, and what someone should understand or be able to do after hearing it. Do not substitute a neighboring, easier idea. Ask a focused question if the meaning remains uncertain and wait before generating explanations that depend on the answer. Search relevant emails, chats and other messages, calendar invitations and agendas, meeting transcripts, project documents, and company examples or data. Use names, topic phrases, and the occasion to find how the idea arose, how it has previously been explained, and where people became confused. Establish the audience from invitations, correspondence, project roles, and actual questions or objections. Look for familiar vocabulary, useful shared experiences, and distinctions they already understand. Treat documented questions as evidence and predicted reactions as simulation. If there is no identified audience, ask whom I want to reach and why. If two materially different audiences are plausible, explain how the explanations would differ and settle the audience before dependent creative work. Existing context may already answer this. Try relevant access first. When sources are unavailable, investigate connection or export alternatives and offer help with the specific material. My rough account is a valid starting point; explain which factual or audience assumptions remain unverified. Do not require me to assemble a polished brief. ### 2. Establish the substance that all five must preserve Write a short internal brief containing the core point, its supporting source references, the mechanism or causal sequence where applicable, and the essential qualification. Add the intended audience, their evidenced concerns, the use context, and the desired understanding. Separate facts, interpretations, and illustrative inventions. Test whether the idea itself is clear enough to explain. Resolve a central contradiction or undefined term before dressing it in examples. Ask me about consequential uncertainty and wait on dependent work; otherwise proceed with the limits stated. If the evidence is extensive, split source reading into bounded topic or document assignments. Require each investigator to return claims, references, contradictory evidence, and coverage gaps. Reconcile those findings into the common brief before beginning creative work. Keep a coverage record so an appealing explanation does not rest on an unread qualification. ### 3. Create five different routes to understanding Use these five forms unless another set would communicate the idea better; preserve five distinct approaches and explain any substitution: - A story: a concrete situation, a person or group pursuing something, a consequential change, and a resolution that reveals the idea. Label an invented story as illustrative. - An analogy: a familiar system mapped explicitly to the important parts of the idea, with the point where the comparison stops working. - A worked example: actual or clearly illustrative inputs, the idea applied step by step, and the resulting difference. Check calculations if used. - A visual explanation: make an actual legible diagram or simple visual that shows the relevant relationships. Use available rendering tools; if unavailable, deliver a readable text diagram, not just a description of an image someone should make. - A direct account: state the idea plainly, explain its mechanism, and show why it matters to this audience. Where useful, brief separate creative agents from the common evidence and audience brief. Give each a bounded form, intended length or medium, source references, required substance, and a complete-explanation deliverable. Let their initial ideas develop independently before comparison. Use waves if concurrency is limited. Without agents, make distinct passes or fresh sessions with explicit handoffs and describe their actual independence. Do not create five paraphrases of the same opening or impose five forms that all repeat one example. ### 4. Test the explanations, then refine them First inspect each for fidelity: what does it retain, omit, add, or imply? Check that an analogy's vividness does not manufacture causation, that a story does not pretend to be evidence, and that a visual can be understood from its labels and relationships. Repair distortions in the explanation itself. Then use a fresh reviewer, or distinct audience reviewers where actual audience differences justify them. Supply the explanation and evidenced audience context without the intended lesson. Ask what they understood and which detail confused them. Only then provide the source brief to check whether that understanding is faithful. Ground simulated reactions in the brief and label them as simulated. If independent review is unavailable, conduct separate comprehension and fidelity passes and say they share context. Present the five complete explanations, with brief guidance on the setting each suits. Ask which is most useful or what still feels wrong, and revise accordingly without losing the five distinct approaches. Finish with usable wording and the actual visual or text diagram. Keep references and important illustrative labels attached where they prevent misunderstanding. These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.
View full AI instructions
Explain a big idea 5 ways.
What the AI will do
- Investigate the idea and the audience’s actual questions, then create five genuinely different explanations.
- Check each explanation for clarity and fidelity, including where an analogy or visual could mislead.
What you can provide
- The idea in rough words, a source, or an example; the audience or occasion if you already know it.
Where you'll take part
- Clarify the meaning or audience where necessary, then react to the explanations and choose what is most useful.
What you'll get
You have five complete explanations of the same idea, each suited to the audience and ready to use or adapt, with a recommendation about where each works best.
Activity context
A story, an analogy, an example, a visual, and a direct explanation can reveal different parts of the same big idea.
For the user
Describe the idea however you can, or share something that contains it. The AI will establish the substance and the audience before creating five different ways in. You can react to what clicks without having to invent the explanations yourself.
Guidance for the AI
These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result.
Start with the activity and the user's context
Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear.
Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them.
Check the capabilities needed for this work
Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit.
When useful access is missing:
- Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help.
- Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot.
- If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response.
- Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available.
Ask focused questions and respect the answers
Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful.
Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements.
Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct
Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material.
Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work:
- Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role.
- Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations.
- Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately.
Produce, check, and revise the result
Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them.
Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result.
Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized.
Your AI prompt
Help me explain one big idea five genuinely different ways. Preserve its substance while finding different routes to understanding for the people who need it.
1. Understand the idea and the audience
Start with my rough description, source material, or example. Identify the central claim or mechanism, the important relationships, and what someone should understand or be able to do after hearing it. Do not substitute a neighboring, easier idea. Ask a focused question if the meaning remains uncertain and wait before generating explanations that depend on the answer.
Search relevant emails, chats and other messages, calendar invitations and agendas, meeting transcripts, project documents, and company examples or data. Use names, topic phrases, and the occasion to find how the idea arose, how it has previously been explained, and where people became confused. Establish the audience from invitations, correspondence, project roles, and actual questions or objections. Look for familiar vocabulary, useful shared experiences, and distinctions they already understand.
Treat documented questions as evidence and predicted reactions as simulation. If there is no identified audience, ask whom I want to reach and why. If two materially different audiences are plausible, explain how the explanations would differ and settle the audience before dependent creative work. Existing context may already answer this.
Try relevant access first. When sources are unavailable, investigate connection or export alternatives and offer help with the specific material. My rough account is a valid starting point; explain which factual or audience assumptions remain unverified. Do not require me to assemble a polished brief.
2. Establish the substance that all five must preserve
Write a short internal brief containing the core point, its supporting source references, the mechanism or causal sequence where applicable, and the essential qualification. Add the intended audience, their evidenced concerns, the use context, and the desired understanding. Separate facts, interpretations, and illustrative inventions.
Test whether the idea itself is clear enough to explain. Resolve a central contradiction or undefined term before dressing it in examples. Ask me about consequential uncertainty and wait on dependent work; otherwise proceed with the limits stated.
If the evidence is extensive, split source reading into bounded topic or document assignments. Require each investigator to return claims, references, contradictory evidence, and coverage gaps. Reconcile those findings into the common brief before beginning creative work. Keep a coverage record so an appealing explanation does not rest on an unread qualification.
3. Create five different routes to understanding
Use these five forms unless another set would communicate the idea better; preserve five distinct approaches and explain any substitution:
- A story: a concrete situation, a person or group pursuing something, a consequential change, and a resolution that reveals the idea. Label an invented story as illustrative.
- An analogy: a familiar system mapped explicitly to the important parts of the idea, with the point where the comparison stops working.
- A worked example: actual or clearly illustrative inputs, the idea applied step by step, and the resulting difference. Check calculations if used.
- A visual explanation: make an actual legible diagram or simple visual that shows the relevant relationships. Use available rendering tools; if unavailable, deliver a readable text diagram, not just a description of an image someone should make.
- A direct account: state the idea plainly, explain its mechanism, and show why it matters to this audience.
Where useful, brief separate creative agents from the common evidence and audience brief. Give each a bounded form, intended length or medium, source references, required substance, and a complete-explanation deliverable. Let their initial ideas develop independently before comparison. Use waves if concurrency is limited. Without agents, make distinct passes or fresh sessions with explicit handoffs and describe their actual independence. Do not create five paraphrases of the same opening or impose five forms that all repeat one example.
4. Test the explanations, then refine them
First inspect each for fidelity: what does it retain, omit, add, or imply? Check that an analogy's vividness does not manufacture causation, that a story does not pretend to be evidence, and that a visual can be understood from its labels and relationships. Repair distortions in the explanation itself.
Then use a fresh reviewer, or distinct audience reviewers where actual audience differences justify them. Supply the explanation and evidenced audience context without the intended lesson. Ask what they understood and which detail confused them. Only then provide the source brief to check whether that understanding is faithful. Ground simulated reactions in the brief and label them as simulated. If independent review is unavailable, conduct separate comprehension and fidelity passes and say they share context.
Present the five complete explanations, with brief guidance on the setting each suits. Ask which is most useful or what still feels wrong, and revise accordingly without losing the five distinct approaches. Finish with usable wording and the actual visual or text diagram. Keep references and important illustrative labels attached where they prevent misunderstanding.
Done when
You have five complete explanations of the same idea, each suited to the audience and ready to use or adapt, with a recommendation about where each works best.
These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.
These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.