Wing I

The Prompting Foundation

Six ingredients that turn a wish into a result

Before you walk another hall, learn the recipe. A great Copilot prompt has six ingredients: Task, Persona, Format, Audience, Tone/Style, and Context/Scope. Casual prompts get casual answers. Structured prompts get answers you can actually use. Every 'Try this' card in this gallery is written in this shape so you can feel the pattern in your bones.

Apothecary shelf of glass jars and dried herb bundles in soft daylight

Exhibit 01

Anatomy of a prompt has the six ingredients

Task = what you want done. Persona = who Copilot should behave as. Format = the shape of the output (report, summary, bullets, table, email, message). Audience = who will read it. (Pro tip: in Copilot you can use their names) Tone/Style = how it should sound. Context/Scope = which files, dates, or boundaries to work within.

Try this — as a…

“Task: draft a follow-up note for a patient visit. Persona: act as a senior clinician. Format: a one-paragraph summary followed by a bulleted list of next steps. Audience: the patient's care team. Tone: precise, warm, and clinically careful. Context: today's visit notes and the patient's recent lab results.”

Copilot Lab — prompt ideas from Microsoft →

Exhibit 02

From vague to precise the same ask can be upgraded

Compare a one-liner to the six-ingredient version. The precise version tells Copilot what to do, for whom, in what shape, and with what boundaries so the first draft is usable, not just plausible.

Try this — as a…

““Vague: 'Summarize the patient.' Precise: Task: summarize Mrs. Alvarez's last three visits. Persona: act as a clinical scribe. Format: a one-paragraph summary followed by bulleted medications, concerns, and next steps. Audience: me, before my consultation. Tone: neutral and clinically precise. Context: the last three encounter notes, nothing else.””

Write effective prompts for Copilot →

Exhibit 03

Reusable patterns you can copy today

You don't have to invent the structure every time. Keep a few templates handy — a summarize pattern, a draft pattern, an analyze pattern — and swap in the specifics.

Try this — as a…

“Summarize pattern → Task: summarize [source]. Persona: act as [role]. Format: [summary + bullets]. Audience: [who reads it]. Tone: [concise / warm / formal]. Context: [time window and files]. Example filled in: summarize Mrs. Alvarez's last three encounters as a clinical scribe, one paragraph plus medication and next-step bullets, for my pre-consultation review, in a neutral clinical tone, scoped to the last three notes only.”

Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption — prompting →