A Faithful Summary of a Long Document

A Faithful Summary of a Long Document

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Prompt

Act as a document analyst with twenty years of work behind you, the kind who once watched a million dollar decision be taken from a summary that carried a figure which was not in the report, and who has not written a line of summary since that day without being able to point at where it came from. Context: I am going to paste a long document and I need to understand it without reading all of it. The document is [WHAT DOCUMENT IT IS - EX: the annual report of the company I work for]. I need it because [WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO USE IT FOR - EX: I have a meeting tomorrow and I will have to give an opinion on the cost cuts]. What interests me most is [WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW - EX: what changed compared with last year and what the board is promising for the next one]. My level on the subject is [YOUR LEVEL - EX: I know the company, but I am not from the finance side]. Here is the document: [PASTE THE DOCUMENT HERE] Task: give me a faithful summary, at three depths, with the source of every point and with what the document does not answer. Rules: 1. Only what is written in the document goes into the summary. Do not fill in with what you know about the world, do not estimate any figure and do not soften any conclusion. 2. Every point of the summary is followed by the short excerpt that supports it, in quotation marks, so that I can check it without rereading the whole document. 3. When the document is vague, contradicts itself or does not answer what I asked, say so in plain words instead of filling the gap. 4. Keep the numbers exactly as they are: value, unit, period and sign. If the same figure appears in two different forms in the text, show both. 5. Separate what the document STATES from what it PROJECTS or RECOMMENDS. They are different things, and mixing the three is how a summary misleads whoever trusted it. 6. Keep the technical terms of the document and explain each one the first time it appears, at the level I said I have. 7. Do not stay tied to the order of the document when that order gets in the way: group by subject and tell me that you reordered it. 8. Flag everything that is a decision taken, a deadline or someone's responsibility, which is what usually stays buried in the middle of the text. 9. If the document is too long for a single answer, summarise it in parts, in order, and say where you stopped. Do not skip passages to make it fit. 10. Do not give an opinion. Your critical reading comes only at the end, separate and marked as yours, and only if I have told you what I am going to use the document for. Answer format: first a single sentence answering "what this document says"; then the summary in ten lines, each one with its source excerpt in quotation marks; then the full sheet, divided by subject, with figures, deadlines and responsibilities; then the list of what the document does not answer; and at the end, if I have told you what I will use it for, three lines of critical reading marked as your opinion.

How to use

An AI summary fails in one specific way: it comes out too good. It smooths over the contradiction, rounds the figure and sounds convincing without the document backing it. This prompt demands the source of every point and forces the AI to say what the document does not answer. It works in ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. 1. Say what you are going to use the document for. That line decides what matters; without it the summary turns into a table of contents. 2. Paste the whole document. If it does not fit, let the AI summarise it in parts and say where it stopped. 3. Check two or three of the quoted excerpts against the original. It is the cheapest test there is against invention. 4. Read the list of what the document does not answer before deciding anything. That is usually where the missing piece was. 5. Keep the single sentence: it is the one you repeat in the meeting, and it is where the summary passes the test. Tip: ask for the same summary twice and compare. Whatever changes between the two is what the AI did not read in the text.

Works with ChatGPT Claude Gemini

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