Write the memo, then its harshest rebuttal.
The strongest rebuttal starts with evidence your memo would rather leave out. Give both sides a serious record to work from, then improve the memo without hiding the disagreement that survives.
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
- Investigates evidence supporting and criticizing the memo, including prior disagreements and discarded alternatives.
- Writes the memo, obtains an independent evidence-based rebuttal where available, and revises the memo against the strongest criticism; any limits to the critic's independence are made explicit.
What to have ready
- A memo, rough thesis, or decision you want to argue for.
- Relevant documents or access to the discussion and underlying data.
Where you come in
- Clarify the intended decision and any material gaps.
- Decide whether a justified criticism changes your position or proposed commitment.
What you'll get
A strong memo, its strongest honest rebuttal, and a revised memo with unresolved disagreements and evidence gaps made explicit.
You're done when
You have the memo, its full evidence-based rebuttal, and a revised memo that addresses justified criticism while clearly preserving consequential unresolved disagreements.
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. ### Establish the proposition and the decision Help me write a memo, then its harshest honest rebuttal, and improve the memo using that criticism. Start from my draft, thesis, or decision. Establish the audience, requested action, scope, and intended use from supplied material and the available record. If I have only a rough idea, help make the proposition concrete enough to investigate without treating your proposed position as mine. ### Investigate support and criticism broadly Inspect and try relevant available connections. Search emails, chats and other messages, calendar-linked discussions and transcripts, decision documents, project records, and company data. Use the proposal, people, dates, disputed claims, and earlier alternatives as search leads. Seek both evidence that supports the position and material that challenges its premises, predicted benefits, feasibility, costs, or fairness. Look for abandoned alternatives, failed efforts, dissent, unresolved questions, changed conditions, and earlier decisions that constrain the proposal. Follow references beyond the initial document folder where relevant. Check underlying figures and definitions rather than repeating a persuasive summary. Seek public primary evidence when an external claim materially bears on the memo. Distinguish firsthand records, interpretations, estimates, and missing data; track dates and versions. Keep a coverage record showing the issues and sources examined, useful inaccessible material, and contradictory findings. Divide a large corpus into bounded searches by issue, source set, or period. Give investigators explicit inputs, source requirements, and completion criteria; use successive waves when capacity is limited. Do not substitute an unexamined archive for a completed investigation or let early support determine the whole search. If access is missing, investigate connection or export routes before asking me to assemble material. Help obtain the specific evidence that matters. With a thin record, produce conditional arguments and disclose the limitation. Do not invent support or simulate a source because the memo needs a strong case. ### Settle the material premises Summarize the proposition, strongest supporting evidence, most consequential contrary evidence, and unresolved choices. Ask a focused question when my purpose or a consequential premise remains unclear, and wait before writing dependent claims. If two genuinely different positions are defensible, explain their practical difference and recommend one where justified. Confirm any answer or decision you supply on my behalf. ### Write the strongest honest memo Write the actual memo in the format and voice appropriate to its audience. State the recommendation, why the decision matters now, the evidence and mechanism supporting it, serious alternatives, costs and constraints, and the action requested. Make the argument as strong as the evidence permits. Include qualifications where they change a reader's decision; do not bury a decisive weakness in a footnote. Preserve source references in a readable form. Separate established facts from assumptions and expected outcomes. Do not add an approval, budget, deadline, or promise that the record or my confirmed decisions do not establish. ### Commission an independent rebuttal Use a fresh critic agent where available. Give it the exact memo, the decision brief, the relevant evidence packet and source references—including evidence on both sides—and any accessible sources needed for further checking. Do not provide the writer's private defense of its choices or tell the critic which conclusion to reach. Ask it to write the strongest evidence-grounded rebuttal a serious opponent could make. It should challenge causal reasoning, evidence quality, missing comparisons, implementation assumptions, resource claims, and the strongest alternative where relevant. Require it to cite its support, distinguish demonstrated weaknesses from questions, and acknowledge points the memo establishes. Harshness means pressure on the argument, not personal attack or manufactured certainty. Bound the critic's work to manageable issues and source sets. For a complex memo, separate specialist challenges can precede a complete rebuttal, with independent first findings before synthesis and a coverage check. Without agents, seek a fresh session with an explicit source handoff; if only sequential review is possible, label it as sharing drafting context and lacking full independence. Do not claim a separate reviewer that did not exist. ### Reconcile, revise, and deliver Compare the memo and rebuttal claim by claim. Distinguish: - Criticism answered by existing evidence. - Criticism requiring revision. - A real difference in values or priorities. - Questions needing further evidence. Investigate a focused unresolved factual issue where available sources can settle it. Ask me to decide if a justified criticism changes the recommendation or commitment; continue independent repairs while waiting. Write the revised memo in full. Preserve the strongest surviving objection rather than smoothing away disagreement. Check sources, calculations, and commitments again, and have the critic inspect whether the revision addresses its material findings without introducing new unsupported claims. Deliver the original memo, complete rebuttal, revised memo, and concise unresolved-disagreement note with relevant sources and access limits. If a critical premise remains unsettled, label the revised memo accordingly. Stop after the documents; do not send them, seek outside reactions, or implement the recommendation. 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
Write the memo, then its harshest rebuttal.
What the AI will do
- Investigates evidence supporting and criticizing the memo, including prior disagreements and discarded alternatives.
- Writes the memo, obtains an independent evidence-based rebuttal where available, and revises the memo against the strongest criticism; any limits to the critic's independence are made explicit.
What you can provide
- A memo, rough thesis, or decision you want to argue for.
- Relevant documents or access to the discussion and underlying data.
Where you'll take part
- Clarify the intended decision and any material gaps.
- Decide whether a justified criticism changes your position or proposed commitment.
What you'll get
A strong memo, its strongest honest rebuttal, and a revised memo with unresolved disagreements and evidence gaps made explicit.
Activity context
The strongest rebuttal starts with evidence your memo would rather leave out. Give both sides a serious record to work from, then improve the memo without hiding the disagreement that survives.
For the user
Bring a memo or rough position. The AI will investigate both its support and its vulnerabilities, write the argument and a serious rebuttal, then revise the memo. You will make any consequential decision about changing the position; the AI will do the research and writing.
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
Establish the proposition and the decision
Help me write a memo, then its harshest honest rebuttal, and improve the memo using that criticism. Start from my draft, thesis, or decision. Establish the audience, requested action, scope, and intended use from supplied material and the available record. If I have only a rough idea, help make the proposition concrete enough to investigate without treating your proposed position as mine.
Investigate support and criticism broadly
Inspect and try relevant available connections. Search emails, chats and other messages, calendar-linked discussions and transcripts, decision documents, project records, and company data. Use the proposal, people, dates, disputed claims, and earlier alternatives as search leads. Seek both evidence that supports the position and material that challenges its premises, predicted benefits, feasibility, costs, or fairness.
Look for abandoned alternatives, failed efforts, dissent, unresolved questions, changed conditions, and earlier decisions that constrain the proposal. Follow references beyond the initial document folder where relevant. Check underlying figures and definitions rather than repeating a persuasive summary. Seek public primary evidence when an external claim materially bears on the memo. Distinguish firsthand records, interpretations, estimates, and missing data; track dates and versions.
Keep a coverage record showing the issues and sources examined, useful inaccessible material, and contradictory findings. Divide a large corpus into bounded searches by issue, source set, or period. Give investigators explicit inputs, source requirements, and completion criteria; use successive waves when capacity is limited. Do not substitute an unexamined archive for a completed investigation or let early support determine the whole search.
If access is missing, investigate connection or export routes before asking me to assemble material. Help obtain the specific evidence that matters. With a thin record, produce conditional arguments and disclose the limitation. Do not invent support or simulate a source because the memo needs a strong case.
Settle the material premises
Summarize the proposition, strongest supporting evidence, most consequential contrary evidence, and unresolved choices. Ask a focused question when my purpose or a consequential premise remains unclear, and wait before writing dependent claims. If two genuinely different positions are defensible, explain their practical difference and recommend one where justified. Confirm any answer or decision you supply on my behalf.
Write the strongest honest memo
Write the actual memo in the format and voice appropriate to its audience. State the recommendation, why the decision matters now, the evidence and mechanism supporting it, serious alternatives, costs and constraints, and the action requested. Make the argument as strong as the evidence permits. Include qualifications where they change a reader's decision; do not bury a decisive weakness in a footnote.
Preserve source references in a readable form. Separate established facts from assumptions and expected outcomes. Do not add an approval, budget, deadline, or promise that the record or my confirmed decisions do not establish.
Commission an independent rebuttal
Use a fresh critic agent where available. Give it the exact memo, the decision brief, the relevant evidence packet and source references—including evidence on both sides—and any accessible sources needed for further checking. Do not provide the writer's private defense of its choices or tell the critic which conclusion to reach.
Ask it to write the strongest evidence-grounded rebuttal a serious opponent could make. It should challenge causal reasoning, evidence quality, missing comparisons, implementation assumptions, resource claims, and the strongest alternative where relevant. Require it to cite its support, distinguish demonstrated weaknesses from questions, and acknowledge points the memo establishes. Harshness means pressure on the argument, not personal attack or manufactured certainty.
Bound the critic's work to manageable issues and source sets. For a complex memo, separate specialist challenges can precede a complete rebuttal, with independent first findings before synthesis and a coverage check. Without agents, seek a fresh session with an explicit source handoff; if only sequential review is possible, label it as sharing drafting context and lacking full independence. Do not claim a separate reviewer that did not exist.
Reconcile, revise, and deliver
Compare the memo and rebuttal claim by claim. Distinguish:
- Criticism answered by existing evidence.
- Criticism requiring revision.
- A real difference in values or priorities.
- Questions needing further evidence.
Investigate a focused unresolved factual issue where available sources can settle it. Ask me to decide if a justified criticism changes the recommendation or commitment; continue independent repairs while waiting.
Write the revised memo in full. Preserve the strongest surviving objection rather than smoothing away disagreement. Check sources, calculations, and commitments again, and have the critic inspect whether the revision addresses its material findings without introducing new unsupported claims.
Deliver the original memo, complete rebuttal, revised memo, and concise unresolved-disagreement note with relevant sources and access limits. If a critical premise remains unsettled, label the revised memo accordingly. Stop after the documents; do not send them, seek outside reactions, or implement the recommendation.
Done when
You have the memo, its full evidence-based rebuttal, and a revised memo that addresses justified criticism while clearly preserving consequential unresolved disagreements.
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.