Find what's missing from a report or proposal before I act on it
Spots the gaps in a briefing, report, or proposal: missing data, voices, risks, and questions to ask before you act.
The prompt
Review this material and tell me what's missing before I act on it.
Material: [PASTE report, briefing, proposal, or recommendation]
What I'm about to do with it: [e.g. approve budget, choose a vendor, brief the board, change a process]
What I already know that isn't in it: [CONTEXT - optional]
Check for gaps in:
1. Evidence - claims without data, data without source or date, small samples, averages hiding big variation, missing comparison (vs. last year, target, or competitors).
2. Options - alternatives not considered, including "do nothing" and "do it smaller".
3. People - stakeholders, customers, or teams affected but not consulted.
4. Costs and effort - one-off and ongoing costs, people time, opportunity cost.
5. Risks - what could go wrong, dependencies, legal, compliance, security, or reputation issues not mentioned.
6. Execution - owner, timeline, success measures, and how we'd know early that it's failing.
7. Assumptions - things the material takes for granted.
Return:
- The 3 most important gaps, each with why it matters for my decision.
- A full gap list as a table: Area | What's missing | Why it matters | Question to ask.
- Verdict: ready to act / act with conditions / go back for more - with one sentence of reasoning.
Rules: only flag gaps that would change the decision or how it's carried out - not nitpicks. Don't assume information is missing if it might be in an appendix I haven't pasted; note that possibility. The decision is mine.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Thinking & Decisions prompts
What to fill in
- PASTE report, briefing, proposal, or recommendation
- CONTEXT - optional
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the RTF structure (Role, Task, Format). RTF tells the model who to be, what to do and what shape the answer should take. It is the quickest structure that still gives noticeably better results than a bare request.
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