What I have found is: if the AI operator cares, they can tell it to make the instructions, or summary, or whatever it is, whatever length they want it to be. Just summarize the most important parts to half a page, or go into extreme depth on every section. Target 300-400 words, or 3500-4000… whatever you feel is appropriate for the topic and the target audience.
Not strictly about AI, when I write something explaining something technical for my manager (who is technical and can understand it all, but rarely has the time to) what I often find myself doing is getting to the end, then going back and writing a 25 words or less summarization of what he actually wants to know to communicate this up the line to his managers - then leaving the 3-5 pages of technical regurgitation of details that led me to that conclusion as reference for the one or two little details he’ll possibly be interested in for his own curiosity.
The problem I have with short instructions is: you never know what details you’re leaving out that are going to matter in the future until people start using your instructions and making bad assumptions because you didn’t over-emphasize a point - like: writing an instruction that says “accept all the defaults” - well, apparently our colleagues in the overseas office weren’t capable of following that particular instruction without an additional big bold NOTE: hitting them over the head to emphasize: no, really, you’re going to regret all the extra work you have to do if you don’t accept the default options.
It’s an iterative process, and should be the same whether or not you’re using an AI agent to do the writing for you. Try, fail. Try again, fail again, fail better next time.
What I have found is: if the AI operator cares, they can tell it to make the instructions, or summary, or whatever it is, whatever length they want it to be. Just summarize the most important parts to half a page, or go into extreme depth on every section. Target 300-400 words, or 3500-4000… whatever you feel is appropriate for the topic and the target audience.
Not strictly about AI, when I write something explaining something technical for my manager (who is technical and can understand it all, but rarely has the time to) what I often find myself doing is getting to the end, then going back and writing a 25 words or less summarization of what he actually wants to know to communicate this up the line to his managers - then leaving the 3-5 pages of technical regurgitation of details that led me to that conclusion as reference for the one or two little details he’ll possibly be interested in for his own curiosity.
The problem I have with short instructions is: you never know what details you’re leaving out that are going to matter in the future until people start using your instructions and making bad assumptions because you didn’t over-emphasize a point - like: writing an instruction that says “accept all the defaults” - well, apparently our colleagues in the overseas office weren’t capable of following that particular instruction without an additional big bold NOTE: hitting them over the head to emphasize: no, really, you’re going to regret all the extra work you have to do if you don’t accept the default options.
It’s an iterative process, and should be the same whether or not you’re using an AI agent to do the writing for you. Try, fail. Try again, fail again, fail better next time.