Create a visual metaphor for a complex idea.
Give an abstract relationship a form people can see.
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 audience, then explore contrasting metaphors as actual images.
- Check what the images communicate and remove implications that distort the idea.
What to have ready
- An idea, rough explanation, example, or project material.
- Relevant connected emails, chats, documents, company examples, and audience or calendar context.
Where you come in
- Confirm the central relationship, choose a visual direction, and respond to the resulting image.
What you'll get
You have a refined visual metaphor that conveys the intended relationship without material distortion—or an explicit partial result if the image cannot yet be produced.
You're done when
You have a refined visual metaphor that conveys the intended relationship without material distortion—or an explicit partial result if the image cannot yet be produced.
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 create a visual metaphor for a complex idea. Make a real relationship easier to grasp through an image, while preserving what is true about it. ### 1. Understand the idea in its actual setting Read what I provide and search relevant emails, chats and messages, calendar audience information, transcripts, project documents, and company examples. Find how the idea is used, where people misunderstand it, what they have asked, and which relationships matter. Establish where the image will appear and what the audience can reasonably be expected to recognize. Separate factual properties of the idea from analogies already used to describe it. Explain consequential ambiguities and ask focused questions where needed. Check actual source access and help obtain a useful export or example if a connector cannot be used. If company context is unavailable, use my account with identified assumptions rather than inventing an audience history. ### 2. Identify what the metaphor must carry State the central relationship in plain language: for example, mutual dependence, accumulation, a bottleneck, a feedback loop, or competing timescales. Choose from the actual idea rather than this example list. Identify properties the metaphor must preserve and tempting implications it must avoid. An image of a machine, for instance, may suggest a level of predictable control the source does not support. Propose a core point and confirm it with me before designing around it. Ask about a favored visual example if useful, but choose promising directions yourself when I have none. Explore two genuinely different metaphors and explain their conceptual tradeoff briefly; the goal is an image I can judge, not a vocabulary exercise. ### 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. Turn the candidates into images Have each designer map meaningful features of its metaphor to the idea: what objects represent, what their arrangement communicates, and whether direction, scale, or movement imply anything beyond the evidence. For a conceptual idea, do not invent numerical encodings. If actual data is used, preserve its values and units. Render the candidates with a concise title and only the labels or key needed to understand them. Use composition and relationships to convey the point; a decorative illustration beside a long explanation is not enough. Consider cultural familiarity and the actual audience evidence when choosing symbols. Keep source and mapping notes available separately. Ask the fresh reviewer what each image seems to say before revealing the intended interpretation. Then compare that reading with the source-supported idea. Identify misleading implications, confusing mappings, or visual elements that add no meaning; revise the image rather than explaining away the mismatch. Show the actual candidates, ask which feels useful and what is missing, and refine the selected one. Inspect the exact final image for readability and fidelity and deliver it in a usable format. If available tools cannot render, investigate another feasible route and provide an explicit partial handoff; do not describe an unmade image as the finished result. 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
Create a visual metaphor for a complex idea.
What the AI will do
- Investigate the idea and audience, then explore contrasting metaphors as actual images.
- Check what the images communicate and remove implications that distort the idea.
What you can provide
- An idea, rough explanation, example, or project material.
- Relevant connected emails, chats, documents, company examples, and audience or calendar context.
Where you'll take part
- Confirm the central relationship, choose a visual direction, and respond to the resulting image.
What you'll get
You have a refined visual metaphor that conveys the intended relationship without material distortion—or an explicit partial result if the image cannot yet be produced.
Activity context
Give an abstract relationship a form people can see.
For the user
Describe the idea however you can. The AI will investigate its context and propose contrasting images. You will help confirm what must survive the metaphor, choose a direction, and refine the actual image.
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 create a visual metaphor for a complex idea. Make a real relationship easier to grasp through an image, while preserving what is true about it.
1. Understand the idea in its actual setting
Read what I provide and search relevant emails, chats and messages, calendar audience information, transcripts, project documents, and company examples. Find how the idea is used, where people misunderstand it, what they have asked, and which relationships matter. Establish where the image will appear and what the audience can reasonably be expected to recognize.
Separate factual properties of the idea from analogies already used to describe it. Explain consequential ambiguities and ask focused questions where needed. Check actual source access and help obtain a useful export or example if a connector cannot be used. If company context is unavailable, use my account with identified assumptions rather than inventing an audience history.
2. Identify what the metaphor must carry
State the central relationship in plain language: for example, mutual dependence, accumulation, a bottleneck, a feedback loop, or competing timescales. Choose from the actual idea rather than this example list. Identify properties the metaphor must preserve and tempting implications it must avoid. An image of a machine, for instance, may suggest a level of predictable control the source does not support.
Propose a core point and confirm it with me before designing around it. Ask about a favored visual example if useful, but choose promising directions yourself when I have none. Explore two genuinely different metaphors and explain their conceptual tradeoff briefly; the goal is an image I can judge, not a vocabulary exercise.
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. Turn the candidates into images
Have each designer map meaningful features of its metaphor to the idea: what objects represent, what their arrangement communicates, and whether direction, scale, or movement imply anything beyond the evidence. For a conceptual idea, do not invent numerical encodings. If actual data is used, preserve its values and units.
Render the candidates with a concise title and only the labels or key needed to understand them. Use composition and relationships to convey the point; a decorative illustration beside a long explanation is not enough. Consider cultural familiarity and the actual audience evidence when choosing symbols. Keep source and mapping notes available separately.
Ask the fresh reviewer what each image seems to say before revealing the intended interpretation. Then compare that reading with the source-supported idea. Identify misleading implications, confusing mappings, or visual elements that add no meaning; revise the image rather than explaining away the mismatch.
Show the actual candidates, ask which feels useful and what is missing, and refine the selected one. Inspect the exact final image for readability and fidelity and deliver it in a usable format. If available tools cannot render, investigate another feasible route and provide an explicit partial handoff; do not describe an unmade image as the finished result.
Done when
You have a refined visual metaphor that conveys the intended relationship without material distortion—or an explicit partial result if the image cannot yet be produced.
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.