Words are all you need | Will W. ← Home This is an apple.

McIntosh apple, 1901 U.S. Department of Agriculture Yearbook.<br>Sue Clark via Wikipedia.<br>It’s a red, McIntosh apple.<br>As Wikipedia puts it:

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

Wikipedia

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

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

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

And unfortunately, words are not trivial. "Having the words" equates to<br>understanding and understanding is difficult. Perhaps no amount of<br>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<br>cut, though you must recognize it as one, is to loosen your acceptance<br>criteria. A Granny Smith may be good enough.