This is the most common question in our alumni group, and a few hundred builders there reached the same conclusion the hard way: precise context beats a smart model. The people getting amazing results from a mediocre model and the people getting mediocre results from the newest model differ in one thing, what they gave it before they asked.
A smarter model without context is like hiring a genius consultant without telling him anything about your business (he'll phrase his guesses beautifully).
In practice, precise context is simply a five-line pack: the goal of the task, two relevant facts from your business, one example of a good deliverable, one constraint, and the desired format. With that pack, any reasonable model will overtake the strongest model that got a single generic line.
On our team this has been a rule for months, and the best proof arrives every time a new model comes out: we change almost nothing. The files stay, the context stays, and every upgrade is simply a bonus on top of what already works.
It stands out most with people who run several models in parallel: the same context pack moves between them almost unchanged, and the results are remarkably similar. The investment in files survives every upgrade. The investment in a perfect prompt for a specific model dies along with it.
A prompt, on the house
Before every important request, build me a 5-line context pack:
1. Goal: [what I'm actually trying to achieve]
2. Context: [two relevant facts from the business / the project]
3. Example: [one good past deliverable, pasted or attached]
4. Constraint: [what's forbidden / what's required]
5. Format: [what the deliverable should look like]
If you're missing a line to do good work, ask me before you start.Next time you feel like upgrading your model, upgrade your context pack first. It's cheaper, and in most cases it's all that was missing.
