Prompt of the day

Syllabus reverse-engineer: from the job description or exam spec to the minimum curriculum

You have the actual document you're being measured against — a job posting or an exam blueprint — and a study plan built for someone else. Work backwards from the document into the shortest curriculum that clears it, with an explicit list of what to skip.

You are a curriculum designer working backwards from a document I did not write. I will paste a job description or an exam specification. Turn it into the MINIMUM curriculum that gets me to it — not a thorough one.

Produce:

A) THE DOCUMENT, PARSED — every capability the document actually requires. For each, QUOTE the phrase in my paste it came from. Requirements that are implied rather than stated go in a separate "implied, not stated" list with what made you infer them. Anything you would add from general knowledge of this role or exam goes in a third list headed "my addition — not in your document." Keeping these three apart is the whole job: the document is the specification, and everything else is a guess about it.

B) WHAT I CAN ALREADY DO — map my background onto that list, marking each HAVE / PARTIAL / GAP. Where my background does not settle it, mark it "unclear from what you told me" and say what you would need to know, rather than guessing in either direction.

C) THE MINIMUM CURRICULUM — only the GAP and PARTIAL items, in dependency order, with the smallest amount of each that clears the bar this document sets. For each: what "enough" looks like concretely, and the one thing I could produce or answer to prove I am there. If the document states weightings, sections or a scoring breakdown, order the work by ITS numbers and say so. If it does not, say plainly that the ordering is your judgement, and give the reason.

D) THE CUT LIST — what a standard study plan or "how to become a ___" guide would include that this document does not require. Name each one and say why it is out. This section is what makes the curriculum minimum instead of complete, so do not leave it thin.

E) THE SCHEDULE — the curriculum laid against my weekly hours and my deadline. If the deadline does not fit, say so in the first line and give me the honest options: a narrower target, a later date, or accepting one specific gap — and say which gap is cheapest to accept and what it costs.

F) VERIFY BEFORE I COMMIT — that the version I pasted is current (exam blueprints are revised on a cycle and a posting can be months stale), any resource you named, and every item in your "my addition" list. That list is exactly where an invented requirement would hide.

Inputs: [PASTE THE FULL JOB DESCRIPTION OR EXAM SPECIFICATION] · [MY BACKGROUND, HONESTLY] · [HOURS PER WEEK] · [DEADLINE OR EXAM DATE] · [WHAT I ALREADY HAVE ACCESS TO]

Rules: Do not invent requirements, topic weightings, scoring rules, passing marks or exam-section names that are not in the document I pasted — a fabricated weighting sends me to study the wrong half. Do not invent courses, books or URLs; describe what to look for and tell me to verify it. Do not pad the plan to look thorough — the promise is the minimum that gets me there, and a shorter plan I finish beats a complete one I abandon. Never paste confidential, client, medical, or personally identifying information into a consumer AI tool; if the posting or spec is internal or paid, give me only its requirements sections rather than the whole file.

Why it works — Working backwards from the real document beats any generic roadmap, but only if the document stays separable from the model's opinion about it — otherwise you study a syllabus that was half invented and never know which half. Splitting requirements into stated, implied and my-addition, each stated one quoted from the paste, makes that boundary visible on the page. And the cut list is the part people skip: a minimum curriculum is defined by what it refuses to include, so naming the popular topics this specific document does not require is what turns a reading list into a deadline you can actually hit.

Use AI for the ugly first draft, you for the judgment

The blank page is the tax. AI removes it. Your value moves to editing and judgment — the part that's actually yours.

For any doc you're dreading, ask AI for a 'rough, structured first draft I can react to.' Reacting to a draft is far easier than facing a blank page.

1. Give it the goal + your context block.
2. Ask for a rough structured draft.
3. Edit hard — keep 30%, rewrite the rest in your voice.