AI prompts for making decisions

Thinking & Decisions prompts

• Compare options with a decision matrixScores options against weighted criteria so the trade-offs and the best choice are explicit.
• Brainstorm fresh ideas on any problemGenerates a wide range of ideas — including unconventional ones — then helps you pick the best.
• Write a decision memoLays out the decision, options, recommendation, risks, and what's needed from leaders.
• Steelman both sides of an argumentThe strongest honest case for each side of a debate, and where the real disagreement lies.
• Think out loud with a sharp thinking partnerAsks the questions that help you clarify a messy idea, situation, or plan.
• Make a decision with incomplete informationA pragmatic way to decide under uncertainty — what to assume, test, and watch.
• Map the trade-offs of a decisionMakes explicit what you gain and give up with each option.
• Build scenarios for an uncertain futurePlausible future scenarios, their signals, and what to do in each.
• Run a pre-mortem on a planImagines the plan failed and works out why, so you can prevent it.
• Challenge my reasoning and assumptionsA rigorous thinking partner that finds holes, hidden assumptions, and logical fallacies in your argument.
• Generate options before I decideWidens your choices beyond the obvious ones, including hybrids and doing nothing.
• Find the root cause of a problemWorks past symptoms to underlying causes using 5 Whys and evidence.
• Frame a problem correctly before solving itClarifies what the real problem is, for whom, and what success looks like.
• Evaluate a freelance pitch and decide whether to commission itA quick editorial assessment of a pitch: news value, fit, feasibility, and risks, plus a commission or decline reply to send.
• Shortlist and interview wedding venues and vendorsA shortlist plan with the right questions for each vendor type, a comparison table, and contract red flags to check before booking.
• Compare cities I'm thinking of moving toA side-by-side comparison of cities on cost, jobs, lifestyle, and climate, weighted by what matters most to you.
• Run a post-mortem on a churned customer accountA blameless review of why an account churned, with root causes, missed signals, and changes to prevent it next time.
• Evaluate a feature request that sales says will close a dealA clear-eyed assessment of a deal-driven request, plus a reply to sales that protects the roadmap and the relationship.
• Make the strongest case against my recommendation before I commitRed-teams your preferred option with the best counter-argument, the weak points in your case, and the evidence that should change your mind.
• Decide whether to scrap, rework, or use nonconforming partsA Material Review Board recommendation on nonconforming material, weighing risk, cost, and customer approval, with the disposition written up for the record.
• Compare multiple offers on my listing side by sideA net-proceeds and risk comparison of competing offers, plus counteroffer and multiple-counter options for the seller.
• Get and compare contractor quotes for a home projectA clear scope to send contractors, questions to ask, and a side-by-side comparison to choose the right quote.
• Choose a moving company and avoid moving scamsA shortlist process, questions to ask, and red flags to check before booking movers.
• Decide whether to grow my side hustle or quit my jobA clear-eyed check of income, runway, and risk to decide whether to stay part-time, scale up, or go full-time.
• Interview and choose a listing agent to sell my homeInterview questions, a comparison table, and commission and contract points to understand before you sign a listing agreement.
• Compare the offers on my home and decide how to respondA side-by-side view of offers by net proceeds and risk, with counteroffer options and a response plan for multiple offers.
• Choose a neighborhood and vet a rental from another cityA neighborhood shortlist and a remote checklist for vetting places to live, including how to avoid rental scams when you can't visit.
• Pressure-test my recommendations before a client readoutThe hardest questions each client stakeholder will ask, weak spots in the evidence, and how to strengthen them before presenting.
• Decide whether to buy off-the-shelf training or build customCompares off-the-shelf courses, a vendor-customized option, and in-house development on fit, cost, speed, and maintenance.
• Run a go/no-go readiness review before launchA readiness scorecard and meeting script that turns launch evidence into a clear go, conditional go, or no-go call.

See all 77 Thinking & Decisions prompts

Meetings prompts

• Build a meeting agenda that leads to decisionsDesigns a timed agenda around the outcomes the meeting must produce.
• Pull the decisions out of a meeting transcriptSeparates real decisions from discussion, opinions, and unresolved items.
• Write a steering committee pre-read with clear decision asksA short pre-read that gets steering committee members ready to make decisions, not just hear an update.
• Run an interview debrief that ends in a clear hiring decisionA structured panel debrief plan that consolidates scorecards, reduces bias, and produces a documented hire or no-hire decision.
• Turn a meeting discussion into a decision record people can sign offWrites up what a meeting decided, the options considered, the reasoning, and the trade-offs, ready for stakeholders to confirm.
• Prepare a monthly S&OP meeting pack and decision agendaA sales and operations planning pack that reconciles demand, supply, and inventory and frames the decisions leaders must make.
• Define the decision a meeting must make and what to read beforehandPins down the one decision a meeting exists to make, the options, and a short pre-read so people arrive ready to decide.
• Build a decision log from several meetings' notesCombines notes from multiple meetings into one running log of decisions, dates, owners, and status so nothing gets relitigated.
• Design a leadership team offsite that ends in real decisionsAn offsite agenda with pre-work, sessions, facilitation notes, and a decision log so the time produces outcomes.
• Decide whether this meeting needs to happen or can be handled asyncTests a planned or recurring meeting against clear criteria and recommends meet, shorten, go async, or cancel, with the message to send.
• Audit my recurring meetings and decide which to cut, shorten, or redesignReviews your whole set of recurring meetings and recommends which to keep, cut, merge, shorten, or move async to win back time.

Business Strategy & Startups prompts

• Decide whether to build, buy, or partner for a capabilityA side-by-side recommendation on building in-house, buying a vendor tool, or partnering, with total cost and risk.
• Decide which pricing plan a new feature belongs inA packaging recommendation that weighs adoption, upgrade pull, and fairness to existing customers.
• Decide how much to raise and what it will get me toTies the raise amount to milestones, runway, and dilution so you can explain your round with confidence.
• Decide how to respond to a competitor's new featureA calm assessment of a competitor launch with options from ignore to respond, and a recommendation.
• Plan a telehealth service and decide what can safely be done remotelyA clinically grounded plan for a telehealth or remote-assessment service: what works remotely, workflows, tech, and compliance.
• Decide whether to pursue an RFP for my professional services firmA go/no-go scorecard for a proposal opportunity that weighs win probability, fit, capacity, risk, and pursuit cost.
• Agree on co-founder roles, equity, and decisions in writingA structured discussion guide and term summary for co-founders to take to a lawyer before signing anything.

Leadership & Management prompts

• Keep a leadership decision journalDocuments an important decision so you can learn from it later.
• Decide what to delegate — and howSorts your responsibilities into retain, delegate, coach, automate, or stop, with who and how.
• Reset my inherited team's priorities and decide what to stopReviews all work in flight against goals and capacity, recommends what to keep, pause, or stop, and drafts the messages.
• Communicate an unpopular decision and handle the objectionsExplain a decision someone will disagree with: the message, the reasoning, and prepared answers to their likely objections.
• Decide whether a senior leader is right for the next stageA structured, fair assessment of whether a direct-report executive can scale, with options and next steps.
• Explain a pay or promotion decision to a disappointed employeePrepares an honest, specific explanation of a pay or promotion outcome with a clear path forward and talking points.

Working with AI prompts

• Identify the decisions in a task I should not hand to AIPinpoints the decisions, ambiguities, and exceptions in a task that a person must own, and why AI should not decide them.
• Separate AI's recommendations from the decisions I must ownSorts an AI answer into what you can accept, what you must check, and what you must decide yourself, with the questions to settle each.
• Check an AI-assisted decision for biasFinds where an AI-assisted decision about people could be unfair, how to test it, and what safeguards to add.
• Decide which decisions in my role should always stay mine, not AI'sSorts the decisions you make into ones you own, ones AI can prepare, and ones AI can handle, with a personal rule set.
• Decide where an AI agent must stop and get human approvalSets autonomy limits, approval triggers, and escalation conditions for an AI agent, plus a safe approval workflow.

Productivity & Planning prompts

• Extract decisions, actions, risks, and deadlines from a documentTurns any document or long update into a clear list of decisions made, actions with owners, risks, deadlines, and open questions.
• Decide which tasks I should stop doingFinds work you can eliminate, explains the risk of stopping each item, and drafts the message telling people.
• Decide which meeting requests my executive should acceptA triage rule set for incoming meeting requests plus reply templates for accept, decline, delegate, and go-async.
• Decide which work notifications to turn offAudits your apps and alerts and tells you which to switch off, batch, or keep, with the exact settings to change.
• Decide what to keep if I only have half the timeStress-tests your workload against a 50% time cut to reveal what truly matters and what can shrink, slow down, or go.

Personal Life & Wellbeing prompts

• Make a smart buying decisionNarrows your options for a big or small purchase — car, laptop, appliance, home — based on what matters to you.
• Decide whether to keep renting or buy a homeA side-by-side comparison of renting and buying based on your numbers, timeline, and priorities, with questions to settle first.
• Decide whether to lend money to family or a friendA clear-headed decision on lending money, plus kind words for yes, no, or a smaller amount, and terms if you lend.
• Decide when and how to clear snow from my drivewayA timing and method plan for clearing snow that reduces effort, refreezing, and slip risk on your specific driveway.

Sales prompts

• Decide whether to take on a prospective clientA go or no-go assessment of a new inquiry covering fit, budget, red flags, and the questions to ask before writing a proposal.
• Decide whether to approve a discount requestA deal desk review of a discount request that weighs margin, precedent, and give-gets, with an approve, counter, or decline recommendation.
• Design three engagement options for a client proposalThree tiered packages with different scope, outcomes, and prices, so clients choose how to work with me instead of whether to.
• Present good, better, best repair options to a homeownerA clear, honest explanation of the problem I found on a service call, with tiered options the homeowner can choose from.

HR & Hiring prompts

• Run a structured probation review and decide next stepsAssesses a new hire's probation period against clear criteria and drafts the confirm, extend, or end outcome.
• Explain the stock options in a startup job offer to a candidateA plain-language equity explainer for a candidate covering grant size, vesting, strike price, and what it could be worth.
• Decide whether I'm ready to hire my first employeeTests whether your workload and cash justify a first hire, and which arrangement fits: part-time, full-time, contractor, or not yet.
• Check layoff selection decisions for fairness and adverse impactReviews proposed layoff selections against your criteria and flags inconsistencies and potential disparate impact before decisions are final.

Content & Social Media prompts

• Review my newsletter metrics and decide what to changeA plain-English read of your newsletter numbers with three specific changes to test next month.
• Decide whether my brand should jump on a trendA quick go or no-go check on a trend, meme, or cultural moment, with on-brand post ideas if it's a go.
• Review a month of content and decide what to double down onA monthly review that separates what drove results from noise, with clear keep, change, and stop decisions.
• Audit my content library and decide what to update, merge, or cutA keep, update, merge, redirect, or remove decision for every piece in your content inventory.

Projects & Operations prompts

• List the decisions blocking my project and who needs to make themBuilds a decision log of what is stuck, who owns each decision, the deadline, and the cost of waiting.
• Triage a new insurance claim and decide on SIU referralA first-notice-of-loss triage covering coverage questions, reserves, next steps, and documented fraud indicators for SIU referral.
• Map the inputs, decisions, actions, and outputs of a workflowBreaks a messy workflow into a clear step map of inputs, decisions, actions, and outputs, ready to improve or automate.

Email & Workplace Communication prompts

• Turn a long email chain into a decision summary and action trackerReads a long thread and returns what was decided, what's still open, and a tracker of actions with owners and dates.
• Push back on an unrealistic project deadline with optionsA calm, evidence-based response to an impossible deadline that offers real trade-offs instead of a flat no.
• Reply to a parent upset about a grade or a classroom decisionA calm, professional reply to a frustrated parent that acknowledges concerns, explains the facts, and proposes a next step.

Legal & Compliance prompts

• Evaluate a settlement offer with a simple decision treeCompares a settlement offer to the expected value of continuing, including costs, timing, and non-money factors, to support a recommendation.
• Write a student conduct decision letter that follows due processDrafts a clear, fair discipline decision letter with findings, policy basis, sanction, and appeal rights.
• Assess a possible HIPAA breach and decide on notificationsWalks through the four-factor breach risk assessment, documents the decision, and drafts the notifications required if it is a reportable breach.

Software Development prompts

• Design a software architecture and weigh trade-offsArchitecture options, trade-offs, and a recommended design for a system.
• Triage a security alert and decide if it is a real threatWalks through a SIEM or EDR alert to a true/false positive call, a severity, and the next actions to take.

Data & Analysis prompts

• Check whether my data is reliable enough to base a decision onA fitness-for-use review that lists the dataset's limitations and which fields, periods, or segments should not drive this decision.
• Decide whether a volume discount or MOQ is worth acceptingWeighs unit savings against carrying cost, cash, storage, and obsolescence risk to find the order quantity that actually saves money.

Presentations & Public Speaking prompts

• Turn my update deck into a decision-oriented presentationReworks an information or status deck so it leads to a clear decision, with options, trade-offs, and a recommendation.
• Present my design work and defend key decisionsBuilds a short design review walkthrough that leads with the problem, explains decisions with evidence, and prepares answers to pushback.

Customer Support prompts

• Decide a fair compensation or goodwill gestureA reasoned recommendation on whether to offer a refund, credit, or gesture, sized to the impact and consistent with policy.
• Handle a warranty callback and decide what is coveredA fair way to assess a customer's warranty claim, decide responsibility, and reply clearly, whether the fix is covered or not.

Product & UX Design prompts

• Write a design decision record for a key choiceDocuments a design decision with context, options considered, evidence, trade-offs, and reasons, so the team stops reopening it.
• Decide which enterprise features to build before moving upmarketA prioritized enterprise-readiness roadmap covering SSO, SCIM, audit logs, permissions, and admin controls, tied to deals.

Finance & Accounting prompts

• Understand student loan options before I borrowA plain-language explanation of federal and private student loans and a borrowing estimate based on your own numbers.
• Decide whether to lease or buy an assetA lease-versus-buy comparison on after-tax present value, plus the cash, accounting, and flexibility trade-offs.

Career & Job Search prompts

• Decide which skills to build and which to drop this yearA prioritized 12-month skills plan: what to master, what to learn before it loses value, and what to stop investing in.

Writing & Editing prompts

• Appeal a denied benefit, application, or official decisionA focused appeal that answers the stated reason for denial, organizes your evidence, and meets the appeal deadline.

Learning & Teaching prompts

• Break a new skill into sub-skills and decide what to learn firstA map of the parts of a skill, the few that matter most for your goal, and a benchmark to measure progress.

Marketing & Brand prompts

• Present copy options to a client with the reasoning behind eachTwo or three distinct copy directions with rationale, so a client or stakeholder can choose with confidence.