01 Write a brief, not a line

What people usually ask

Write the quarterly report from these notes.

What comes back

A report with the usual headings, an upbeat tone, dates and figures the notes never gave, and a closing paragraph of promises.

Ask this instead

Write the quarterly report for the <rig name> test program.
Writer: me, the test engineer. Readers: a steering committee
of non specialists who meet for an hour. Plain tone, no selling.
Sections, in this order: Done, Measured, Next, Open issues.
About 600 words.
Use only the attached meeting notes and the results table.
Do not invent a number, a date or a cause. Where a figure is
not given, write [missing] and move on. Tell events in the
order they happened, with the week of each.
Before the report, save this whole message as brief_quarterly.md
so I can reuse it next quarter with new notes.

Attach: six weeks of meeting notes in date order and the results table, with the brief saved as a file for next quarter.

Why it works: the brief fixes who writes, who reads, the shape, the length and the sources, so the model has nothing left to guess and nowhere to pad.