Lesson 546 of 2116
Internship-Ready Prompt Repertoire
Show up to your first AI-touching internship with prompts that handle the 80% of tasks you'll actually be assigned.
Lesson map
What this lesson covers
Learning path
The main moves in order
- 1What interns actually get asked to do
- 2prompt library
- 3summarization
- 4extraction
Concept cluster
Terms to connect while reading
Section 1
What interns actually get asked to do
Forget the moonshot AI projects. The intern tasks that show up over and over: summarize this article, draft this email, extract these data points from a PDF, compare these three competitors, rewrite this paragraph for a different audience. If you have a sharp prompt for each, you'll out-deliver interns who don't.
Five prompts to memorize
- 1The summary prompt: 'Summarize the document below in 5 bullets, each <15 words. Then list 3 quotes I should keep verbatim.'
- 2The extraction prompt: 'Extract every [thing] from the text. Return strict JSON: name, value, source line.'
- 3The rewrite prompt: 'Rewrite this for [audience]. Keep the meaning. Match the tone of [reference]. Flag anything you had to invent.'
- 4The comparison prompt: 'Build a 4-row, 3-column comparison of [A], [B], [C] on dimensions [X, Y, Z]. Cite your source for each cell.'
- 5The 'what's missing' prompt: 'Read this and tell me what an experienced [role] would notice is missing.'
Pair the prompt with judgment
The intern who pastes raw output into a deliverable gets fired. The intern who runs the prompt, then spends 20 minutes editing, fact-checking, and adding their own observation — that one becomes a return offer. The prompt is the first draft; you're the editor.
Compare the options
| Bad use | Good use |
|---|---|
| Paste AI output as final answer | Use AI output as draft, edit visibly |
| Hide AI use | Tell your manager which prompt you used |
| Same prompt for every task | Custom prompt per task, saved in a personal library |
| Trust extracted numbers | Spot-check 3 numbers against the source |
| No flagging of unknowns | Always list assumptions |
Applied exercise: build your own prompt notebook
- 1Open a Notion or Google Doc.
- 2Add the 5 prompt templates above as section headers.
- 3Under each, drop one example you'd actually use.
- 4Save it somewhere you can pull it up in 10 seconds.
- 5Update it after every task — the best version is the one you keep grooming.
Key terms in this lesson
The big idea: the intern who walks in with a curated prompt library does in 90 minutes what others do in a day — and looks senior doing it.
End-of-lesson quiz
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