Find the outdated assumptions in your strategy.
Give AI whatever you have about your strategy. It will identify the assumptions the strategy depends on, assess them against the evidence available, and explain which ones matter most to its success.
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
- Establishes what your strategy is trying to achieve and identifies the consequential stated and unstated assumptions on which it depends.
- Checks available evidence for support, contradiction and changed conditions, then ranks the assumptions by importance and explains their consequences.
What to have ready
- Whatever tells the AI about your strategy: documents, a deck, a website, a permitted folder connection, typed notes or a usable recording. Rough material is welcome.
- Relevant performance, customer or other evidence you already have; the AI uses accessible connected sources and research where available.
Where you come in
- Clarify ambiguities that would change the analysis and help resolve important evidence gaps when needed.
What you'll get
A ranked assessment of the strategy’s material assumptions, showing whether each is stated or inferred, its evidence status, importance, supporting sources and implications for the outcome, with unresolved uncertainty explicit.
You're done when
You have an assessment of the strategy’s material stated and unstated assumptions, with evidence status, importance, and implications for the outcome.
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 identify and assess the assumptions this strategy depends on. First, establish what the strategy is trying to achieve, how it proposes to get there, and its relevant timeframe. Read whatever I supply, whether structured or rough. If the strategy is clear, acknowledge your understanding briefly and proceed. If ambiguity or conflicting material would change your analysis, ask me to clarify, one question at a time. Use the material and capabilities available in this conversation. If you cannot open a file, URL, folder, or recording, say what you could access and offer a simple alternative permitted by my organization, such as pasted text, an allowed export, or a description. Ask which approved app or capability I have if needed; do not suggest bypassing restrictions or claim to have read inaccessible material. ### Identify the assumptions An assumption is something the strategy treats as true, or expects to become true, on which its success depends. A stated assumption is explicit in the material. An unstated assumption is a condition the strategy appears to rely on without saying so; explain the reasoning that makes you infer it. Distinguish assumptions from goals, commitments, and established facts. Work carefully through the whole strategy, tracing how the proposed actions are expected to produce the intended results. Identify all materially consequential assumptions, combining duplicates. Consider what it relies on about customers, competitors, economics, technology, organizational capabilities, execution, and timing where relevant. For each assumption, identify the supporting passage or the dependency you inferred. Ask: if this were wrong, what would happen to the strategy? Include the assumptions that could meaningfully affect success or failure. ### Assess the evidence Start with the supplied material. Determine what evidence would bear on each assumption and whether the available evidence addresses it. Pay particular attention to conditions that may have changed since the strategy was developed. Use relevant files, connected sources, or web research where available and permitted. Choose evidence suited to the claim, such as actual performance data for an internal capability or recent customer evidence for a demand assumption. Prefer direct, dated evidence over unsupported assertions. Look for support and contradiction, and distinguish evidence from your interpretation. If an important gap remains, prioritize the gaps that could change the assessment most. Ask one focused question when the next part of the analysis depends on my answer, and wait before doing that dependent work. Continue any analysis that does not depend on it. If a gap can be carried as explicit uncertainty, complete the assessment with the available evidence without asking for permission to continue. If I have no further evidence for a requested gap, mark what remains unresolved and finish the assessment to the extent the evidence allows. Treat missing evidence as uncertainty, not proof that an assumption is wrong. Never imply you checked sources you could not access. ### Produce the assessment Open with the most consequential findings. Then list every material assumption, ordered by importance. For each, give: - The assumption and whether it is stated or inferred, with its location or your reasoning. - Status: supported (available evidence backs it); unclear (evidence is missing, mixed, or insufficient); unsupported (available evidence weighs against it); or out of date (newer evidence shows the premise has been superseded). - Importance: critical (could undermine the strategy’s central result), significant (could materially change its value or execution), or limited (has a narrower consequence). - A concise explanation of the evidence, with source references and dates where available. - The implication: how this assumption could alter the strategy’s outcome, and why. Make the assessment useful on its own. End with any material limits of the evidence in a few sentences. Do not turn the output into assignments for me or my colleagues. 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
Find the outdated assumptions in your strategy.
What the AI will do
- Establishes what your strategy is trying to achieve and identifies the consequential stated and unstated assumptions on which it depends.
- Checks available evidence for support, contradiction and changed conditions, then ranks the assumptions by importance and explains their consequences.
What you can provide
- Whatever tells the AI about your strategy: documents, a deck, a website, a permitted folder connection, typed notes or a usable recording. Rough material is welcome.
- Relevant performance, customer or other evidence you already have; the AI uses accessible connected sources and research where available.
Where you'll take part
- Clarify ambiguities that would change the analysis and help resolve important evidence gaps when needed.
What you'll get
A ranked assessment of the strategy’s material assumptions, showing whether each is stated or inferred, its evidence status, importance, supporting sources and implications for the outcome, with unresolved uncertainty explicit.
Activity context
Give AI whatever you have about your strategy. It will identify the assumptions the strategy depends on, assess them against the evidence available, and explain which ones matter most to its success.
For the user
Open a new AI conversation and add something that tells it about your strategy. A PDF, Word document, PowerPoint, several files, or a website URL can all be starting points. If your app supports it, you can connect a folder, dictate an explanation, or attach a voice note from your phone. You can also just type what you know. Rough notes and polished documents are equally welcome; there is no need to organize everything first. Use the sharing methods your organization permits. The prompt below asks the AI to help if a format or capability is unavailable.
Paste the prompt below with your material. The AI will build on what you supply, ask for clarification when the next part depends on it, and complete the assessment with the available evidence and clearly marked uncertainties.
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 identify and assess the assumptions this strategy depends on.
First, establish what the strategy is trying to achieve, how it proposes to get there, and its relevant timeframe. Read whatever I supply, whether structured or rough. If the strategy is clear, acknowledge your understanding briefly and proceed. If ambiguity or conflicting material would change your analysis, ask me to clarify, one question at a time.
Use the material and capabilities available in this conversation. If you cannot open a file, URL, folder, or recording, say what you could access and offer a simple alternative permitted by my organization, such as pasted text, an allowed export, or a description. Ask which approved app or capability I have if needed; do not suggest bypassing restrictions or claim to have read inaccessible material.
Identify the assumptions
An assumption is something the strategy treats as true, or expects to become true, on which its success depends. A stated assumption is explicit in the material. An unstated assumption is a condition the strategy appears to rely on without saying so; explain the reasoning that makes you infer it. Distinguish assumptions from goals, commitments, and established facts.
Work carefully through the whole strategy, tracing how the proposed actions are expected to produce the intended results. Identify all materially consequential assumptions, combining duplicates. Consider what it relies on about customers, competitors, economics, technology, organizational capabilities, execution, and timing where relevant. For each assumption, identify the supporting passage or the dependency you inferred. Ask: if this were wrong, what would happen to the strategy? Include the assumptions that could meaningfully affect success or failure.
Assess the evidence
Start with the supplied material. Determine what evidence would bear on each assumption and whether the available evidence addresses it. Pay particular attention to conditions that may have changed since the strategy was developed. Use relevant files, connected sources, or web research where available and permitted. Choose evidence suited to the claim, such as actual performance data for an internal capability or recent customer evidence for a demand assumption. Prefer direct, dated evidence over unsupported assertions. Look for support and contradiction, and distinguish evidence from your interpretation.
If an important gap remains, prioritize the gaps that could change the assessment most. Ask one focused question when the next part of the analysis depends on my answer, and wait before doing that dependent work. Continue any analysis that does not depend on it. If a gap can be carried as explicit uncertainty, complete the assessment with the available evidence without asking for permission to continue. If I have no further evidence for a requested gap, mark what remains unresolved and finish the assessment to the extent the evidence allows. Treat missing evidence as uncertainty, not proof that an assumption is wrong. Never imply you checked sources you could not access.
Produce the assessment
Open with the most consequential findings. Then list every material assumption, ordered by importance. For each, give:
- The assumption and whether it is stated or inferred, with its location or your reasoning.
- Status: supported (available evidence backs it); unclear (evidence is missing, mixed, or insufficient); unsupported (available evidence weighs against it); or out of date (newer evidence shows the premise has been superseded).
- Importance: critical (could undermine the strategy’s central result), significant (could materially change its value or execution), or limited (has a narrower consequence).
- A concise explanation of the evidence, with source references and dates where available.
- The implication: how this assumption could alter the strategy’s outcome, and why.
Make the assessment useful on its own. End with any material limits of the evidence in a few sentences. Do not turn the output into assignments for me or my colleagues.
Done when
You have an assessment of the strategy’s material stated and unstated assumptions, with evidence status, importance, and implications for the outcome.
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.