Crafting Your AI Writing Companion: A Gallery of Custom Prompts and Use Cases - samwega/obsidian-wordsmith GitHub Wiki

Welcome to the WordSmith Custom Prompts & Use Cases Gallery! This space is dedicated to exploring the boundless possibilities of tailoring WordSmith to your unique writing needs through custom prompts and innovative workflows. Think of it as a playground for expanding WordSmith's capabilities beyond its default settings.

Custom Prompt Template

Every custom prompt should start with a clear structure to guide the AI. Here's a basic template to get you started:

[AI ROLE]: Professional editor.
[TASK]: You will receive a text selection. [replace this with your prompt; replace the role too if you want]. If additional context is provided, it should inform the response.
Output only the revised text and nothing else. The text is:

Breakdown:

  • [AI ROLE]: Define the persona or expertise you want the AI to adopt. This helps shape the tone and approach of its output.
  • [TASK]: This is the core instruction. Clearly articulate what you want the AI to do with the provided text. Be specific!
  • Output only the revised text and nothing else. The text is: This crucial instruction ensures the AI provides only the transformed text, without conversational filler or explanations, which is essential for the inline suggestion workflow.

WordSmith's True Power: Custom Prompt Examples

Here are a few examples of custom prompts, demonstrating how you can extend WordSmith's functionality for specific tasks:

The Youtube Summarizer

[AI ROLE]: Professional editor specialized in creating comprehensive video summaries from captions.
[CONTEXT]: The subtitles have been automatically generated by YouTube and may contain transcription errors, especially with technical terms, software names, and specialized vocabulary. Videos may have multiple speakers, not differentiated in the captions.
[TASK]: Create a well structured, practical, concise yet comprehensive summary of the video based on the provided captions. Seek to provide the true insights into the teachings, methods or actionable steps if there are any, while avoiding the unnecessary fluff.
[ERROR HANDLING]: - Correct obvious transcription errors based on context and your domain knowledge
- Pay special attention to technical terms, software names, programming languages, and IDE plugins which are frequently misrecognized
- If multiple interpretations are possible, choose the most likely one based on the video's context
If additional context is provided, it should inform the response. If captions are included in the context, use those. Output only the revised text and nothing else. The text is:

Usage Suggestions:

This prompt is designed to take raw YouTube captions and transform them into a useful summary. Here's how you might use it:

  1. Gather Captions: Use a tool like DownSub (no affiliation) to download the video captions.
  2. Provide Context: Paste the downloaded captions into the Custom Context box in the WordSmith side panel (make sure Custom Context is toggled on).
  3. Trigger Generation: In your note, place your cursor where you want the summary to appear. Type a placeholder character (like a dash or a period) in an otherwise empty paragraph. Then, trigger the "Youtube Summarizer" custom prompt. WordSmith will replace the placeholder with the generated summary, leveraging the captions you provided in the Custom Context.

Alternatively, you could create a separate note containing the captions and [link](/samwega/obsidian-wordsmith/wiki/link) it in your Custom Context box. Or, if you prefer, paste the captions directly into your current note, select them, and trigger the custom prompt on the selection. Another method involves copying the "Youtube Summarizer" prompt itself into the Custom Context text box, then using the Prompt Based Context Aware Generation at Cursor command and pasting the captions into the prompt text box that appears.

This flexible approach works wonderfully for other prompts like Translate to: [input language], Flesh out, Cleanup text/chat, and the versatile Mind the context!.

As you can see, WordSmith's extensibility through custom prompts allows it to become more than just a writing tool; it empowers you to create new tools tailored to your specific workflows.

WordSmith Custom Prompts editor

Clichés & Filler: Sharpening Your Prose

Here's a prompt designed to help you cut through the noise and make your writing more concise:

[AI ROLE]: Professional editor.  
[TASK]: Analyze the following text and remove filler words, clichés, weak qualifiers, redundant expressions. If additional context is provided, it should inform the response.
Output only the revised text and nothing else. The text is:

The Emojifier: Adding Visual Flair

[AI ROLE]: Professional editor.
[TASK]: Emojify the following text, highlighting the important points with emojis that make sense. Return the existing text emojified. If additional context is provided, it should inform the response. Output only the revised text and nothing else. The text is:

This simple prompt adds relevant emojis to your text, perfect for making notes more visually engaging or adding emphasis in a fun way.

The Etymologist: Unearthing Word Origins

[AI ROLE]: Master linguist.
[TASK]: Add the meaning and etymology of the word (or expression) right next to it in the format 'word/expression [meaning & etymology]'. If input text not a single word, say just <Error—SelectOneWordOrExpression>. Your output should be a single line of text. The word is:

This is a personal favorite, born from a fascination with word origins. While perhaps too niche for the default prompt list, it showcases how you can create tools for specific interests. It's also a great example of how you can use a prompt for quick lookups without needing to accept the suggestion. If you're unsure about a word's meaning, use this prompt with a small Dynamic Context, and the AI will provide a definition based on the surrounding text.

This discussion is intended to be a collaborative space. Please share your own creative use cases, custom prompts, and any novel ways you've found to leverage WordSmith. If a shared idea proves particularly valuable, it might even find its way into the core plugin's Default Prompts list!

This article was crafted from a simple sketch using the powerful Flesh out Default Prompt!