Because your context document is already handling your professional identity, your client profile, your voice and your standing preferences, the prompting framework for a specific task does not need to repeat all of that. It needs to add three things: what the task is, how you want the output structured, and what the specific constraints are for this piece of work.
Task, format and constraints. Those are the three components that do the heavy lifting in every prompt you write from this point on.
Let me take each one.
Task is what you are actually asking the tool to do for this specific piece of work. Not in general: right now, for this client, for this purpose. The more precise your task instruction, the more specific the output. “Write a pre-departure email” is a task. “Write a pre-departure email for David and Sarah, first-time Japan travellers, covering arrival logistics at Narita, the pace of the first two days in Tokyo, and closing with a warm reference to the anniversary they mentioned when they booked” is a task with the specificity to produce something genuinely useful. The client detail, the trip detail, the structural expectation, and the emotional note you want to land: all of it is in the task instruction, because none of it is in your context document.
Format tells the tool how you want this particular output structured. Your context document may already specify that you prefer prose in client-facing content, and the tool will default to that. But format goes further than prose versus bullet points. How long? One version or several options to compare? Summary paragraph first, or lead straight into the detail? A subject line included or not? If you do not specify, the tool makes its own judgement. Sometimes that judgement is right. Specifying it removes the variable and saves you an editing round.
Constraints define the specific limits of this task: what to avoid, what to exclude, what length not to exceed. Your context document carries your standing constraints, the things that are always true about how you work. But every task has its own specific boundaries on top of those. Do not include pricing in this email. Do not reference the property by name at this stage. Keep it under two hundred words because this client reads on their phone. This email is not the place for destination detail: that is in the itinerary document they already have. Constraints at the task level are how you prevent the tool from doing something technically reasonable that is wrong for this specific situation.
