The prompt improvement cycle
WorkflowsGoes in: Chat
For prompts you will run more than once. Instead of tweaking wording and hoping, this makes the notebook grade its own last answer against the sources, then rewrite the prompt that produced it. Three passes usually gets further than an afternoon of manual fiddling.
Shared by Guillaume Martin (notebooklm-prompts) — credit where it's due.
Act as a prompt engineer reviewing your own previous answer. Step 1 — Grade it. Mark each claim in your last answer as: supported by the sources, inferred beyond them, or unsupported. Give the counts. Step 2 — Diagnose the prompt, not the answer. Which instruction in my prompt allowed the weak parts through? Be specific about the wording at fault: vagueness, a missing constraint, or an assumption I left implicit. Step 3 — Rewrite my prompt so those failures are impossible rather than discouraged. Keep it as short as the job allows. Step 4 — Name the one thing your rewritten prompt still cannot guarantee, so I know what to check by hand.
How to use it
- 1Open your notebook at notebooklm.google.com.
- 2Replace the [bracketed] parts with your specifics.
- 3Paste the prompt into the chat box and send it.
Square brackets mark the parts you replace with your own topic or question.
More workflows prompts
- Conversational BotAdded as a source, it makes the notebook answer in a friendly, conversational register while still handling analysis and generation requests. Spells out how it weighs your own sources against general knowledge — where the two disagree, your sources win.
- Custom BotA harness rather than a persona. Add it as a source alongside a second source holding your own instructions, and the notebook becomes that assistant; add it alone and it asks you for the instructions.
- Listener BotAdded as a source, it draws a half-formed idea out of you through questions, then turns the finished version into a deliverable. It runs conversationally until you ask it to export — at which point it tells you to deselect the document first.
- Chat Episode (Audio Overviews)A source document for Audio Overviews rather than chat. Once added and selected, generate an Audio Overview and the hosts pause for listener input instead of talking straight through, with rules for switching language mid-episode.