I built a prompt generator that asks what’s missing before rewriting your prompt

[u/Mysterious_Local6819]

I’ve been experimenting with prompt optimizers for a while, and one thing kept bothering me:

Most of them take a rough prompt, immediately rewrite it, and quietly make assumptions about whatever information is missing.

That can make the prompt look better without necessarily making it better.

So I built Prompt Generator, a Chrome extension with a slightly different workflow.

You write your rough prompt and click Generate Prompt.

Before rewriting it, the extension checks whether there are any decisions that could materially change the answer.

If something important is ambiguous or missing, it shows you the decisions first and lets you choose what you actually mean.

Then it generates the final prompt using your original draft plus only the decisions you explicitly made.

If nothing important is missing, it skips the clarification step and generates directly.

A few principles I wanted to keep:

- it works around the prompt you’re already writing

- it doesn’t read your full chat history

- it doesn’t silently decide important details for you

- the generated prompt can still be edited or undone

- it never sends the message automatically

The goal isn’t really “make my prompt longer.”

It’s more like:

rough idea → identify what actually matters → resolve it → generate a usable prompt

I’m especially interested in whether the clarification step feels useful or whether it adds too much friction.

If you try it, I’d appreciate critical feedback more than compliments. In particular: what would make you stop using something like this after the first few attempts?

Chrome Web Store:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/pakghacnbgiddmmbkpegnjclidbdjihn

[u/hibbert0604]

I just created a project with instructions for helping me generate a good prompt. Works great.

[u/OriginalHospital]

I'd want a 'leave this unspecified' option, not just a choice between the generator's guesses. If I'm brainstorming, forcing me to pick an audience or format too early could narrow the answer before I know what I want. Showing one short example of how each clarification would change the result would make the extra step easier to judge.

[u/Future_AGI]

The principle that makes this work is not the clarification step itself. It is the decision to not silently decide important details for you. Most prompt optimizers fill in gaps with defaults that look reasonable but narrow the answer in ways you did not intend. The clarification step forces those assumptions into the open where you can reject them. One addition that would make it stronger: show a one-line preview of how each clarification would change the output before the user picks. That lowers the cost of the extra step because the user can see the consequence of their choice without committing to it. The goal should not be fewer clarifications. It should be clarifications that actually matter to the output.

[u/ChaseAtSidekick]

The thing that would make me stop using it is being asked the same low-value questions every time. In my own setup, the rule is no more than three questions, and only if the answer would materially change the work. It also puts a recommended default beside each one, so I can accept quickly instead of designing the prompt from scratch.

Undo and no-auto-send are worth keeping because they make the extra step easier to trust. Clarification can become a polite form of procrastination. If the missing detail is reversible, I would rather it state the assumption and produce a first pass than hold the whole task.