Duration: 50 minutes | Level: Intermediate | Last Updated: June 2026
This segment covers Warner's Laws 8-14 -- the craft of shaping context so that any LLM produces sharper, more reliable output on the first try.
| Law | Title | Core Idea |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | Surgical Context Sculpting | Give the model exactly the context it needs -- no more, no less. |
| 9 | Role-Play Directing | Assign a specific persona with stakes and accountability. |
| 10 | Task Decomposition | Break complex asks into discrete, ordered steps. |
| 11 | Few-Shot Examples | Show the model what "good" looks like before asking it to produce. |
| 12 | Chain-of-Thought | Ask the model to reason step by step so it catches its own errors. |
| 13 | Meta-Prompting | Use the model to critique and improve your own prompts. |
| 14 | Strike While the Iron Is Hot | Iterate in the same session while context is fresh. |
All demos use a single fictional company so learners can focus on technique, not backstory.
- Company: Contoso Robotics
- Size: 500 employees, $120M annual revenue
- HQ: Austin, TX
- CEO: Maria Chen
- Products: WarehouseBot Pro, WarehouseBot Lite, LogiMover 500
- Strategic initiative: Expanding into healthcare logistics
| File | Law(s) | What Learners Do |
|---|---|---|
demos/few-shot-showdown.md |
11 | Compare zero-shot vs. few-shot product briefs side by side. |
demos/chain-of-thought-budget.md |
12 | Allocate an $8 M R&D budget with and without chain-of-thought. |
demos/meta-prompting-loop.md |
13, 14 | Use Gemini to critique and improve a mediocre prompt, then re-run. |
demos/role-play-director.md |
9 | Run three versions of a supply-chain risk review with escalating role specificity. |
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
data/contoso-rd-budget-2026.csv |
R&D budget data for the chain-of-thought demo. |
data/contoso-product-brief-template.md |
House-style product brief template for the few-shot demo. |
- Open the demo file for the law you are teaching.
- Have learners run Version A first and capture the output.
- Then run Version B (or C) and compare.
- Discuss what changed and why, referencing the relevant law.
Data files in data/ can be pasted directly into a chat window or uploaded as attachments depending on t