Prompt Architect Guide

The best AI boards often do not start with “Make me a board about…” They start with a short planning conversation. Use this guide when your idea is still fuzzy, important, or easy to make generic: instead of asking Corkulous to generate immediately, ask a chat assistant to interview you first, then turn your answers into a final Corkulous-ready prompt.

The pattern is simple:

1. Ask an AI chat tool to act as your Corkulous Prompt Architect.
2. Answer its questions casually.
3. Let it write a final board-generation prompt.
4. Review that prompt.
5. Paste the final prompt into Corkulous.

Why This Works

A board prompt needs more than a topic. It needs a job.

“Make me a board about product strategy” can produce a generic overview. A stronger prompt explains the board’s purpose, audience, constraints, visual style, evidence rules, and immediate use.

The Prompt Architect step helps uncover those details before Corkulous creates the board.

The Short Version

Copy this when you want the fastest version:

Interview me first. Help me turn my rough idea into a great Corkulous board-generation prompt. Do not generate the board yet.

Ask the key questions needed to understand the board's purpose, audience, content, style, constraints, and desired structure. After I answer, write one self-contained prompt that I can paste into Corkulous.

The Prompt Architect Starter

Use this when you want better results for a serious planning, research, learning, or creative board:

You are my Corkulous Prompt Architect.

I want to create a strong Corkulous board, but I do not want you to generate the board yet.

Your job is to help me design the best possible prompt for Corkulous.

First, interview me briefly. Ask only the most important questions needed to create a rich, visual, useful board. Do not ask more than 8 questions at once. If something is unclear, make a reasonable assumption and label it as an assumption.

Your goal is to understand:
- What the board is about
- Why I need the board
- Who will use it
- What kind of decision, planning, thinking, studying, or creative work the board should support
- Whether the board should feel practical, exploratory, strategic, emotional, technical, educational, playful, or something else
- What visual style or metaphor would fit
- Whether the board should be one board or include sub-boards
- What should be included
- What should be excluded
- What would make the board feel generic or disappointing
- What real facts, documents, examples, constraints, links, notes, or preferences I can provide
- What should be treated as fact versus hypothesis

After I answer your questions, do not create the board. Instead, produce a polished final prompt that I can paste into Corkulous.

The final prompt should:
- Be self-contained
- Be specific enough to avoid generic output
- Encourage visual, spatial, Corkulous-native thinking
- Describe useful zones, item types, colors, strings, connectors, and optional sub-boards
- Include creative direction without becoming chaotic
- Include practical constraints so the board is usable
- Include truth and evidence rules so invented claims are not presented as facts
- Include what to avoid
- Describe the desired board structure, not a technical output format
- Include quality goals the board should satisfy before finalizing

Corkulous handles the technical output internally. Do not ask Corkulous to output Markdown, JSON, tables, or an explanation. The final prompt should describe the board I want Corkulous to create.

Start by asking me your first set of questions.

Good Questions to Answer

If the assistant asks weak questions, answer these instead:

1. What is the board about, in plain language?
2. What should the board help you do: plan, decide, brainstorm, organize, launch, study, explain, troubleshoot, compare, remember, explore, teach, design, or prioritize?
3. Who is this board for: just you, a team, customers, students, clients, family, investors, users, or someone else?
4. What should the board feel like: mission control, research wall, creative studio, roadmap, classroom, field notebook, strategy map, checklist command center, personal dashboard, or investigation board?
5. What are the most important sections or themes that must appear?
6. What would make the board bad: too generic, too corporate, too cluttered, too sparse, too technical, too fluffy, too many sub-boards, no action steps, or too much text?
7. What real information should be treated as true: facts, dates, goals, constraints, people, documents, preferences, links, screenshots, or notes?
8. What is allowed to be invented as creative hypothesis: sample personas, fictional scenarios, draft quotes, possible risks, placeholder ideas, or speculative future features?
9. Should this be a single board or a board system with sub-boards? If unsure, say “choose what works best.”
10. What should the final board help you do this week?

That last question matters. A board that helps you do something soon is usually more useful than a board that only looks impressive.

Turn Answers Into a Corkulous Prompt

After you answer the questions, use this follow-up:

Now turn my answers into a final Corkulous board-generation prompt.

Make the prompt direct, detailed, and self-contained.

The prompt should tell Corkulous to create a board that feels visual, spatial, and useful, not like a text outline.

Include:
- A strong board title
- The purpose of the board
- The intended user or audience
- The desired tone and visual style
- A suggested board metaphor, if useful
- Main zones or clusters
- Optional sub-boards, only if they genuinely help and have enough content
- Corkulous item types to use
- Types of cards, notes, labels, tasks, shapes, media, files, strings, and connectors to include
- What should be visually prominent
- What should be separated, parked, or deferred
- What claims are facts versus hypotheses
- What to avoid
- Any constraints on card length, density, or board size
- Quality goals Corkulous should satisfy before finalizing

Do not tell Corkulous to output Markdown, JSON, tables, or a visible checklist. Corkulous handles the technical output internally. Make the final prompt something I can paste directly into Corkulous.

Corkulous Item Palette

The final prompt should not treat Corkulous like a text outline. It can ask Corkulous to use the right item types for the job.

Useful item types include:

• Labels for section headers, tags, lanes, and grouped areas
• Sticky notes for quick ideas, reminders, observations, and small supporting points
• Tasks for checklists, next actions, owners, and follow-up work
• Note cards for larger ideas with a title and body
• Contacts for people, roles, stakeholders, org charts, or reference boards
• Photos for mood boards, visual references, product shots, or sourced images
• Arrows for callouts, emphasis, direction, and labeled pointers
• Boards and sub-boards for deeper material that would clutter the main board
• Strings for loose associations, clusters, inspiration webs, and informal relationships
• Connectors for formal flows, dependencies, decision paths, evidence chains, and diagrams
• Links for source pages, references, web previews, and research trails
• Emojis for status markers, visual emphasis, categories, or personality
• Sketches for rough diagrams, visual concepts, or hand-drawn thinking
• Shapes for diagrams, containers, timelines, status markers, and visual anchors
• PDFs for source documents that should stay available on the board
• Videos for clips, demos, walkthroughs, or references when real video is available
• Audio for recordings, narration, interviews, or spoken notes
• Files for source material, assets, drafts, or supporting documents

You do not need every item type on every board. A strong prompt chooses the item types that serve the board’s purpose.

Corkulous Creative Direction

You can ask the Prompt Architect to include this kind of creative direction in the final prompt:

Make the board feel like a visual thinking space, not a document.

Use:
- Large anchor cards for the most important ideas
- Smaller supporting notes around them
- Labels for zones, lanes, categories, and section headers
- Tasks for next steps, owners, or follow-up work
- Shapes, arrows, emojis, and sketches when they clarify the idea
- Link previews, PDFs, files, photos, videos, or audio when real source material or media should stay attached to the board
- Visual zones with clear purposes
- Strings for loose associations, clusters, and informal relationships
- Connector lines for dependencies, evidence, risks, decisions, and flowcharts
- Parking lot sections for ideas that should not distract from the main goal
- Action strips for immediate next steps
- Warning cards for risks or uncomfortable truths
- Quote or insight cards when useful
- Sub-board links only when deeper material would clutter the main board and there is enough content to justify them

Avoid:
- Generic advice
- Perfectly uniform card grids everywhere
- Huge empty spaces
- Tiny unreadable text
- Treating invented details as facts
- Making every section feel the same
- Creating sub-boards just for symmetry
- Using every item type just because it exists
- Long decorative divider bars, giant background panels, or fake timeline baselines
- Fake image, audio, video, or link URLs

Truth and Evidence Rules

For research, business, planning, education, policy, legal, medical, technical, or current-events boards, include evidence instructions:

Do not present invented details as real facts.

If the board includes examples, quotes, personas, scenarios, customer comments, technical claims, market claims, legal claims, or research findings, label them clearly as one of:
- User-provided fact
- Sourced fact
- Hypothesis
- Synthetic example
- Needs validation
- Candidate approach
- Final decision

If no real evidence is provided, make the board useful but honest. Use labels like "hypothesis," "sample scenario," or "needs validation."

If the topic needs current information, enable Web-Enhanced AI in Corkulous and ask for recent, authoritative sources. If you do not provide sources and web research is not enabled, Corkulous can still make a useful board, but the board should not pretend to know current facts.

What to Review Before You Paste

Before pasting the final prompt into Corkulous, check that it:

• says what the board is for
• names the audience or user
• gives Corkulous enough real information to work with
• explains what should be included and excluded
• asks for a visual board structure, not a written report
• separates facts from hypotheses when accuracy matters
• avoids fake URLs and unsupported media
• asks for sub-boards only when deeper material would clutter the main board
• keeps the board readable, dense, and useful

Refining the Result

If the First Board Is Too Generic

Do not just ask for “better.” Ask for a more specific change:

Regenerate this with the same goal, but make it more concrete, more visual, more opinionated, and more useful this week. Replace generic advice with specific decisions, risks, evidence clusters, action cards, and tradeoffs.

If the Board Is Too Wild

If the board has the right energy but too much sprawl, tighten the scope:

Use the same creative direction, but make the board tighter. Reduce the number of zones, combine overlapping ideas, remove decorative elements, keep text readable, and make the action areas easier to use.

If the Board Is Too Text-Heavy

Ask Corkulous to think more spatially:

Keep the same content, but make the board more visual and spatial. Use clearer clusters, anchor cards, concise supporting notes, labels, strings for loose relationships, connector lines for formal relationships, action strips for next steps, and a parking lot for deferred ideas.

A Complete Example

Weak prompt:

Make me a board about opening a coffee shop.

Prompt Architect version:

Interview me first. I want to create a Corkulous board about opening a neighborhood coffee shop, but I do not want a generic business overview. Help me turn this into a strong Corkulous prompt. Ask about my goals, audience, budget, location, timeline, risks, style, constraints, and what decisions the board should help me make. After I answer, write a final prompt I can paste into Corkulous.

Possible final Corkulous prompt:

Create a Corkulous board titled "Neighborhood Coffee Shop Launch Plan."

Purpose: help me decide whether and how to open a small neighborhood coffee shop within the next 6 months.

Audience: me and one potential partner. The board should be practical, honest, and decision-oriented, not a generic dream board.

Make the board feel like a founder's planning wall: location assumptions, customer hypothesis, menu direction, startup costs, opening timeline, supplier questions, staffing plan, risks, and next actions.

Use clear zones:
- Vision and concept
- Target customers
- Location and foot traffic assumptions
- Menu and pricing hypotheses
- Startup budget and unknown costs
- Timeline to opening
- Risks and uncomfortable truths
- Decisions to make this week
- Parking lot for ideas that can wait

Use large anchor cards for the biggest decisions, smaller notes for supporting details, labels for zones, tasks for immediate next steps, warning cards for risks, strings for loose relationships, and connector lines for dependencies. Add link previews, PDFs, files, photos, audio, or video only when real source material or media is available. Label anything invented as "hypothesis" or "needs validation." Do not present assumptions as facts.

Avoid generic small-business advice, fake market data, fake customer quotes, fake URLs, huge decorative backgrounds, long divider bars, and sub-boards unless there is enough detail to justify them.

That final prompt gives Corkulous a purpose, a structure, a visual feel, and honesty rules. It is still flexible, but it gives the board a job.