The Ipromptism Checklist: 7 Habits to Stay Literate with AI

{
    "prompt": "A few months ago I published [Ipromptism: Is AI Creating a New Form of Illiteracy?]( The idea was simple: we are learning to *prompt* faster than we are learning to *think with* AI. We can get a fluent answer in seconds, yet many of us are losing the ability to judge, verify, or rebuild that answer ourselves. I call this pattern **Ipromptism** (the framework is archived on Zenodo: [10.5281/zenodo.23212581]( The most common reaction I got was: \"OK, I recognise the problem. Now what do I actually do on Monday morning?\" This post is my answer. ## Why a checklist? I have trained more than 2,500 people on AI tools, from developers to managers to people who had never opened ChatGPT. One thing comes up in almost every session: awareness alone does not change habits. People nod at the concept and then go back to copy-pasting the first output they get. Checklists work because they are boring in the best way. Pilots and surgeons use them because good intentions break down under pressure. Shipping code with an AI assistant at 6 p.m. on a Friday is exactly that kind of pressure. So here are seven habits I recommend to builders who want to use AI heavily *without* outsourcing their thinking. ## The Ipromptism checklist ### 1. Write the goal before you write the - If you cannot state the goal without the AI, you are not ready to - Keep this note next to your prompt. It becomes your yardstick for judging the output. This one habit turns the AI from an oracle into a tool you are steering. ### 2. Predict the answer first Take thirty seconds to guess what a good answer should contain: the approach, the main risk, the rough shape of the code. - If the output matches your prediction, you have gained confidence. - If it does not, you have learned something, or caught a mistake. Either way, you stay an active participant instead of a passive reader. ### 3. Verify, don't vibe Fluent text feels correct. That feeling is not evidence. - Run the code. Write or run the tests. - Check every API, flag, and library version against the official docs. Hallucinated parameters look perfectly plausible. - For factual claims, open the source. If there is no source, treat the claim as a hypothesis.",
    "model": "ChatGPT 4o",
    "aspect_ratio": "1:1",
    "category": "Engineering & Strategy",
    "content_type": "text_prompt",
    "surface": "text_library",
    "quality_score": 80,
    "provenance": "COMMUNITY_PROMPT"
}