Explain your most complex project in one visual.
Make the project understandable before you explain it.
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 project and its audience, then find the point one visual needs to communicate.
- Create contrasting visual candidates and review what they actually convey before refining one.
What to have ready
- A project name or any useful starting material: notes, a deck, diagrams, documents, or connected records.
- Available project data, emails, chats, and calendar or meeting information can establish context.
Where you come in
- Confirm the central point and intended audience, then choose a visual and help refine it.
What you'll get
You have one usable visual explaining the project, checked against its evidence and audience needs—or a clearly identified partial result if essential evidence or rendering access is missing.
You're done when
You have one usable visual explaining the project, checked against its evidence and audience needs—or a clearly identified partial result if essential evidence or rendering access is missing.
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 my most complex project in one visual. Investigate it, find the relationship or point that matters, and create a visual I can actually use. ### 1. Reconstruct the project and the audience Begin with my project name, materials, or rough account. Inspect available access and search relevant project documents and data, emails, chats and other messages, calendar milestones and audience invitations, and meeting transcripts. Follow people, project names, dates, decisions, and dependencies in the material to useful related records. Establish: - The purpose, current state, and outcome the project is meant to produce. - Its important components, actual dependencies, sequence, and unresolved decisions. - Who will see the visual, their expressed questions or concerns, and where and how they will view it. Use dated evidence to distinguish a current commitment from an abandoned proposal. Keep unknown relationships unknown. If access is missing, investigate connection or export options and offer help obtaining the specific material needed. A rough interview can help establish context, but identify unsupported parts rather than presenting them as an investigated project map. ### 2. Establish the point before designing From the evidence, propose the short sentence an audience member should be able to say after seeing the visual. It might explain how the parts fit, why the project matters, what must happen first, or where the decision lies. Do not try to fit every project fact into one image. Keep omitted detail available in the underlying source record. Ask a focused question if the intended use or consequential interpretation remains unclear. Offer two genuinely different emphasis choices if that would help, with the practical difference made visible in a small sketch or outline. Confirm the central point and audience before designs depend on that choice. Welcome an example of visual communication I like without requiring me to find one. ### Divide the work without losing the evidence Use subagents where available. An analysis agent first identifies the core point and supporting evidence; after I confirm the consequential interpretation, brief separate visual agents to explore contrasting forms. Give each the same verified source material or a traceable subset it can actually inspect, definitions, audience evidence, agreed point, viewing format, and its particular design direction. Ask for an actual rendered candidate, not just a design description. Let their first designs finish independently before comparing them. Assign a fresh reviewer the rendered candidates and evidence-supported audience background, initially without the designers' explanation or intended takeaway. Ask what each image communicates, what they notice first, and what remains confusing. Then provide the evidence and agreed point for a separate fidelity check. The lead reconciles findings, fixes material problems, and owns the final artifact. Keep source reading and production within each agent's capacity. Split large inputs into named portions, keep source and coverage records, and use waves if concurrency is limited. Without subagents, use separate design passes and a fresh-session review with a compact evidence handoff where possible; accurately identify review that shares the drafting context. Preserve the actual design and checking work in the fallback. ### Visual directions to draw on These practical directions adapt existing visual work; choose forms for this evidence and audience, rather than imitating a designer or using every approach. - **Quiet comparison:** aligned small charts, direct labels, and meaningful baselines can reveal the exception. [Edward Tufte's sparkline examples](https://www.edwardtufte.com/notebook/sparkline-theory-and-practice-edward-tufte/). - **Change unfolding:** trajectories or successive frames can make an important transition visible. [Gapminder Tools guide](https://www.gapminder.org/tools/assets/guide.pdf). - **Human detail:** show individual cases and supplied qualitative context within a larger pattern. [Giorgia Lupi's Data Humanism](https://giorgialupi.com/data-humanism-my-manifesto-for-a-new-data-wold). - **Meaningful scale:** comparable quantities shown together can make an abstract difference comprehensible. [Information is Beautiful's Billion Dollar-o-Gram](https://informationisbeautiful.net/2010/the-billion-dollar-o-gram-2009/). - **A bold visual argument:** purposeful geometry, contrast, and direct labels can carry a consequential comparison. [Du Bois and the Atlanta University team's original charts](https://www.searchablemuseum.com/w-e-b-du-bois-at-the-1900-paris-exposition/). - **Relationships revealed:** ordered networks, flows, or hierarchies can expose actual dependencies and hubs. [Nadieh Bremer's alis_ OS](https://www.visualcinnamon.com/portfolio/alis-os/). - **A meaningful metaphor:** an unexpected form can encode real attributes consistently, rather than merely decorate a page. [Shirley Wu's account of visual flowers and trees](https://www.shirleywu.studio/notebook/2025-04-flowers). The descriptions above are enough to begin if a reference page cannot be opened. Inspect original examples when accessible and useful. Use only relationships, quantities, and comparisons supported by this project's evidence. ### 3. Create, inspect, and refine one visual Choose two or three distinct forms suited to the point: for example a flow, a nested structure, or a decisive comparison. Use only supported connections; proximity, size, and arrows must not quietly invent hierarchy, magnitude, or causation. Keep the final result understandable as one visual in the agreed setting; an animation or interaction is useful only if that setting supports it and it does not evade the one-visual purpose. Produce actual candidates with available tools. Inspect the rendered files for legible labels, reading order, overlap, and whether the image carries its meaning without a rescuing explanatory paragraph. Have the reviewer perform the comprehension and source checks described above. Present the candidates, ask which helps me see the project, and revise the chosen one in response. Deliver a usable file or artifact in the agreed format, with sources and unresolved assumptions accessible alongside it. Inspect that exact final artifact after revision. If rendering is unavailable, investigate an available route and help with the necessary handoff; call a design brief a partial result until the image exists. Stop with the refined visual and any material unfinished work. 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 your most complex project in one visual.
What the AI will do
- Investigate the project and its audience, then find the point one visual needs to communicate.
- Create contrasting visual candidates and review what they actually convey before refining one.
What you can provide
- A project name or any useful starting material: notes, a deck, diagrams, documents, or connected records.
- Available project data, emails, chats, and calendar or meeting information can establish context.
Where you'll take part
- Confirm the central point and intended audience, then choose a visual and help refine it.
What you'll get
You have one usable visual explaining the project, checked against its evidence and audience needs—or a clearly identified partial result if essential evidence or rendering access is missing.
Activity context
Make the project understandable before you explain it.
For the user
Start with the project name and whatever you have. The AI will investigate its context and help identify what the audience needs to understand. You will confirm the point, compare actual visual candidates, and refine one for the place you intend to use it.
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 my most complex project in one visual. Investigate it, find the relationship or point that matters, and create a visual I can actually use.
1. Reconstruct the project and the audience
Begin with my project name, materials, or rough account. Inspect available access and search relevant project documents and data, emails, chats and other messages, calendar milestones and audience invitations, and meeting transcripts. Follow people, project names, dates, decisions, and dependencies in the material to useful related records. Establish:
- The purpose, current state, and outcome the project is meant to produce.
- Its important components, actual dependencies, sequence, and unresolved decisions.
- Who will see the visual, their expressed questions or concerns, and where and how they will view it.
Use dated evidence to distinguish a current commitment from an abandoned proposal. Keep unknown relationships unknown. If access is missing, investigate connection or export options and offer help obtaining the specific material needed. A rough interview can help establish context, but identify unsupported parts rather than presenting them as an investigated project map.
2. Establish the point before designing
From the evidence, propose the short sentence an audience member should be able to say after seeing the visual. It might explain how the parts fit, why the project matters, what must happen first, or where the decision lies. Do not try to fit every project fact into one image. Keep omitted detail available in the underlying source record.
Ask a focused question if the intended use or consequential interpretation remains unclear. Offer two genuinely different emphasis choices if that would help, with the practical difference made visible in a small sketch or outline. Confirm the central point and audience before designs depend on that choice. Welcome an example of visual communication I like without requiring me to find one.
Divide the work without losing the evidence
Use subagents where available. An analysis agent first identifies the core point and supporting evidence; after I confirm the consequential interpretation, brief separate visual agents to explore contrasting forms. Give each the same verified source material or a traceable subset it can actually inspect, definitions, audience evidence, agreed point, viewing format, and its particular design direction. Ask for an actual rendered candidate, not just a design description. Let their first designs finish independently before comparing them.
Assign a fresh reviewer the rendered candidates and evidence-supported audience background, initially without the designers' explanation or intended takeaway. Ask what each image communicates, what they notice first, and what remains confusing. Then provide the evidence and agreed point for a separate fidelity check. The lead reconciles findings, fixes material problems, and owns the final artifact.
Keep source reading and production within each agent's capacity. Split large inputs into named portions, keep source and coverage records, and use waves if concurrency is limited. Without subagents, use separate design passes and a fresh-session review with a compact evidence handoff where possible; accurately identify review that shares the drafting context. Preserve the actual design and checking work in the fallback.
Visual directions to draw on
These practical directions adapt existing visual work; choose forms for this evidence and audience, rather than imitating a designer or using every approach.
- Quiet comparison: aligned small charts, direct labels, and meaningful baselines can reveal the exception. Edward Tufte's sparkline examples.
- Change unfolding: trajectories or successive frames can make an important transition visible. Gapminder Tools guide.
- Human detail: show individual cases and supplied qualitative context within a larger pattern. Giorgia Lupi's Data Humanism.
- Meaningful scale: comparable quantities shown together can make an abstract difference comprehensible. Information is Beautiful's Billion Dollar-o-Gram.
- A bold visual argument: purposeful geometry, contrast, and direct labels can carry a consequential comparison. Du Bois and the Atlanta University team's original charts.
- Relationships revealed: ordered networks, flows, or hierarchies can expose actual dependencies and hubs. Nadieh Bremer's alis_ OS.
- A meaningful metaphor: an unexpected form can encode real attributes consistently, rather than merely decorate a page. Shirley Wu's account of visual flowers and trees.
The descriptions above are enough to begin if a reference page cannot be opened. Inspect original examples when accessible and useful. Use only relationships, quantities, and comparisons supported by this project's evidence.
3. Create, inspect, and refine one visual
Choose two or three distinct forms suited to the point: for example a flow, a nested structure, or a decisive comparison. Use only supported connections; proximity, size, and arrows must not quietly invent hierarchy, magnitude, or causation. Keep the final result understandable as one visual in the agreed setting; an animation or interaction is useful only if that setting supports it and it does not evade the one-visual purpose.
Produce actual candidates with available tools. Inspect the rendered files for legible labels, reading order, overlap, and whether the image carries its meaning without a rescuing explanatory paragraph. Have the reviewer perform the comprehension and source checks described above. Present the candidates, ask which helps me see the project, and revise the chosen one in response.
Deliver a usable file or artifact in the agreed format, with sources and unresolved assumptions accessible alongside it. Inspect that exact final artifact after revision. If rendering is unavailable, investigate an available route and help with the necessary handoff; call a design brief a partial result until the image exists. Stop with the refined visual and any material unfinished work.
Done when
You have one usable visual explaining the project, checked against its evidence and audience needs—or a clearly identified partial result if essential evidence or rendering access is missing.
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.