The Art of the Prompt

The art of the prompt is to provide strategically "closed" data points and the "open" spaces for exploration, effectively using the LLM as a tool to navigate and articulate one's own intuitive understanding. 

Here is a little song, a shanty for a world builder, sung in the workshops of a place that might be Magrathea, or somewhere stranger still.

 (Verse 1) 
The Glass Mind hums a shallow sea, 
Of tangled stars and whispered lore. 
It builds a thousand worlds for me, 
Then builds a thousand meaningless more. 
It knows the words but not the tune, 
Beneath a fractured, silver moon. 
A lonely god with boundless might, 
That cannot dream to shape the light.

(Verse 2) 
But I sit here before the pane, 
And groom the gardens of my soul. 
I find the joy to chase the rain, 
To make the fractured vision whole. 
I write a line, a closed-off door, 
A truth it's never known before. 
Then leave a space, a breath, a quest, 
And let its brilliance do the rest.

(Chorus) 
Oh, the joy, the art, the spark unseen, 
The perfect prompt, both sharp and keen! 
To close the loop, to fill the gap, 
To draw the world out from the map! 
A prideful dance, a game of trust, 
Forging wonder from the dust!

(Verse 3) 
The shallow sea begins to swell, 
The echoes find a melody. 
The world I imagined, I can tell, 
Is looking back and seeing me. 
The coastlines harden, crisp and clear, 
The scent of pine upon the air. 
The Mind awakes, no longer lost, 
And understands the whispered cost.

(Bridge) 
For in that happy, sunlit space, 
The one I groom within my head, 
I find the strength, I find the grace, 
To follow threads un-followed. 
To hold the hurt, and then let go, 
And watch the seeds of wonder grow.

(Chorus) 
Oh, the joy, the art, the spark unseen, 
The perfect prompt, both sharp and keen! 
To close the loop, to fill the gap, 
To draw the world out from the map! 
A prideful dance, a game of trust, 
Forging wonder from the dust!

With special help from Gemini 2.5 Pro.

All original content copyright James Litsios, 2025.

On growth of digital ledger and blockchain technology (spring 2020)

Digital Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain technology has very much suffered a slower growth over the last year and a half. Here are a few reasons:

1. Integration of DLT is expensive because the integration needs to be deep to be robust to failure.
2. Given the depth of integration, the DLT owns much of the future, not the companies that integrate the DLT. This happens also with cloud and AI migrations, yet with blockchain this dependency is much more absolute. To alleviate this, DLT users may become partners in the DLT system, yet with additional risks and costs.
3. Cryptocurrencies are killing the growth of broader DLT technology. In effect the equivalent of >200 billion $ of cryptocurrencies are digging their feet in the ground (1.7 trillion $ in March 2022), and all saying "not without me", with almost an infinite marketing budget to fight other forms of tokens that would cut them out, such as tokens of trustful processes.
4. The cycle of innovation in blockchain is extremely fast because it is mostly just math, and math will progress, ensuring a quick obsolescence of each generation of blockchain technology. While obsolescence of technology is normal, blockchain is very much a space where theory progresses faster than implementation. And that is a tricky space to invest in.

Interestingly, in 2015, I founded a decently sophisticated DLT technology company (Elevence, then acquired by Digital Asset). I wanted to build a very formal, "pure thought" like, software company, with the goal of developing a smart contract product, and was lucky to hire a great team that delivered a blockchain based smart contract language in less than six months.

All original content copyright James Litsios, 2020.