Session 2 · Prep
Bring your profile.
The Art of Asking: Prompting Basics · Saturday, September 26, 2026
Ten minutes this week. On Saturday you will watch an ordinary request become three times better with just four lines.
If you have not done the homework, come anyway. We build one live on Saturday, and nobody gets singled out.
New this week
Two sessions, one room
Several of you asked for the class in English. Here it is. From this week the class is taught twice: once in French, once in English.
10:00 to 10:45
The French session. Dallas time, which is 16:00 in Kinshasa and 17:00 in Lubumbashi.
11:00 to 11:45
The English session. Same content, same live demo, taught entirely in English.
It is the same Zoom link and the same room for both. Nothing changes on your side, and you are welcome to stay for both.
Your profile
Ten minutes. It is the only homework this week, and the whole of Saturday is built on it.
Last Saturday I talked about your "profile": instead of building the context again every single time you talk to your AI, you write one page, once, that says who you are. A profile is how you introduce yourself to your assistant.
Here is how to actually build one. Open your assistant, paste exactly the text below, and answer its questions the way you would answer someone who has just met you.
I want you to learn who I am, once and for all, so that I stop re-explaining myself in every conversation. Interview me. Ask your questions one at a time, not all at once, ten questions maximum. Ask me who I am, what I do, my family, my languages, my work or my studies, what I want to accomplish this year, and how I like to be answered. When you are done, write a one-page summary of me that I can paste at the start of any conversation.
Keep the page it writes. In your notes, in a document, emailed to yourself, it does not matter. That is your profile. On Saturday, we use it.
Why an interview and not a form? Because a blank page does not get filled in. Answering one question at a time is far easier. That is already Saturday's first lesson, delivered before Saturday.
Read this first
One rule before you write your profile
Put in it what you would tell a colleague you trust: your work, your city, your languages, what you are trying to do this year.
Never put in it: social security number, passport number, bank details, passwords, or anyone else's medical record.
An AI assistant is a brilliant intern. It is not a safe.
What Saturday teaches
A good request is four lines long.
Line 1 · Who I am
roleYour name, your city, your languages, how comfortable you are with computers.
Line 2 · The situation
contextWhat is happening, for whom, when, and what matters in this particular case.
Line 3 · What I want
taskThe exact thing you want back, and what you are going to do with it next.
Line 4 · What shape it comes in
formatThe length, the language, the tone, and what must not be in it.
And here is the real shortcut: lines 1 and 2 are the same every single time. They are your profile. Write them once this week, and from Saturday a good request costs you only two lines.
For the more technical
The proper word: prompt
Part of the room already uses AI every day and does not need analogies. The four lines above stay the version you remember on a Saturday morning. Here is the same thing in the words you will read everywhere else.
Prompt
A prompt is the complete input the model receives before it produces an answer: your message, plus everything the conversation already carries. It is not a command and it is not a syntax. The model predicts the most likely continuation of what you gave it, so the more precisely the input describes the situation, the more usable the output.
"Prompt engineering" means nothing more than working on that input deliberately, and going again when the output is not right. There is no secret formula, and nobody is keeping one from you.
The four parts, under their usual names
Role
Who is speaking and to whom. In practice: who you are, and sometimes the point of view the assistant should take.
Context
The facts of the situation the model cannot guess. It is the part everyone leaves out, and the one that changes the answer most.
Task
The action you are asking for, ideally a single verb: write, summarise, compare, correct, translate.
Format
The shape of the output: length, language, tone, structure, and what it must not invent.
These are exactly the four lines above, renamed. Role and context are precisely the two lines your profile already contains, which is why this week's homework is the homework it is.
The full definitions
Prompt
What you type. The request itself.
Context
Everything it can see while it writes your answer. Your question, the earlier messages, the document you pasted, your profile note.
Context window
How much it can hold in front of it at once. A desk, not a warehouse.
Your profile note, your .md file
Five or six lines about you that you paste at the top of a conversation, so you stop repeating yourself.
If you already use AI every day, Saturday's gain is not the definition of a prompt. It is reuse: writing role and context once, keeping them, and only ever typing the task and the format again.
Take away
The three prompts of the session
Keep this page open on Saturday. Everything we use live is here, ready to copy. You will not have to write anything down in a hurry.
1. The four lines
The template of the session. One line per part, in this order.
Line 1, who I am: my name is [first name], I live in [city], I speak [languages], and [what matters: my job, my level, my situation]. Line 2, the situation: [the real facts: when, how many people, for whom, what is already decided]. Line 3, what I want: [the request, said exactly, one single result]. Line 4, in what shape: [length, tone, language, where it will be used, and what must not be invented].
2. The header
Once your profile is written it becomes lines 1 and 2, permanently. You only ever type lines 3 and 4 again.
Here is who I am: [paste your profile]. Keep this in mind for our whole conversation. What I want: [the request]. In this shape: [length, tone, language, use].
3. The retry
When the answer misses. You do not start over and you do not give up: you say what was missing.
That is not it yet. What is wrong: [too long / too formal / wrong audience / you invented a detail]. Keep [what was good] and redo only [the part to change]. Before you rewrite, tell me what information you are missing about me or about my situation.
These three prompts are the Session 2 card. Bookmark this page: we use it on Saturday, and you will still be using it in January.
Going further
The profile is only the first step
Your profile tells the assistant who you are. It is the first of four layers, and each one is built once and then works forever. Almost every serious assistant has a version of each, under different names.
Your profile
you wrote this one this weekWho you are, your languages, how you like to be answered. The assistant has it in front of it in every conversation.
“I work in English, French and Lingala. I want structured, direct answers.”
Your standing rules
Instructions that hold everywhere, all the time, whatever the subject. Written once and never revisited.
“Never use long dashes. Define every acronym the first time you use it. Always consider the diaspora.”
The context of one project
What the assistant needs for one particular piece of work, and which has nothing to do with the rest of your life.
“This organisation is a nonprofit serving Congolese associations. Here is the voice of our communications.”
Skills
Know-how prepared in advance, asleep until the day the subject comes up, waking on its own.
One for grant reports. One for bilingual community announcements. One for session write-ups.
The names change from tool to tool: “custom instructions”, “memory”, “projects”, “preferences”. The idea is the same everywhere: write once what you would otherwise repeat a hundred times.
Do not build all four this week. Step 1 is enough, and it already carries three quarters of the gain.
Joining us now?
You have not missed anything.
Session 1 is recorded. Start with the highlights: sixteen minutes is enough to arrive on Saturday level with everyone else.
To be in the room on Saturday
Two things, and the first one only ever happens once.
Already registered on Zoom?
Then there is nothing to redo. Your personal link works for all 16 Saturdays: search your inbox for "CBNEXT", and check your junk folder too. If you cannot find it, write to info@dmact.org and we will resend it.
The certificate
It needs 10 sessions out of 16. October 31 is the last day to join and still reach 10. After that date the class stays free and open, but the certificate is no longer reachable for this cohort.
See you Saturday.
Session 2, Saturday 26 September. "The Art of Asking". Bring your profile.