Words are all you need

This is an apple.

It’s a red, McIntosh apple.

As Wikipedia puts it:

“The McIntosh is a general-purpose apple; it is suitable both for eating raw and for cooking. It is used primarily for dessert, and requires less time to cook than most cultivars. It is usually blended when used for juice or cider. It could also be used to make apple sauce and apple pie.”

Wikipedia

If I ask for a McIntosh apple, I’m asking for something very specific indeed. If I ask for an apple, wanting a McIntosh, and receive a Granny Smith, I have underspecified my ask.

When you prompt, consider this: if you don’t have the words to describe what you want, you may not get it.

Models currently sit in an uncanny valley where they are good enough to produce roughly what you want from very few words but not good enough to produce exactly what you want unless you have all the words.

And unfortunately, words are not trivial. "Having the words" equates to understanding and understanding is difficult. Perhaps no amount of plan-mode or spec-driven development or chain-of-thought extra-ultra-high reasoning will ever get you around the hard work of learning the words.

And if you don’t want to learn the words, which is fine, a worthy short cut, though you must recognize it as one, is to loosen your acceptance criteria. A Granny Smith may be good enough.