Brady Long Profile picture
May 13 15 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I collected every NotebookLM prompt that went viral with students and researchers.

These turn your PDFs, lecture slides, notes, and textbooks into study guides, mock exams, podcasts, flashcards, and private tutors.

13 copy-paste prompts. Zero fluff. Image
1. The Master Study Guide

"Create a comprehensive study guide from these sources. Include: key concepts, definitions, formulas, real-world examples, and 10 practice questions with answers. Organize by topic, not by source."

Turns 200 pages of lecture slides into one clean doc.
2. The Mock Exam

"Generate a 25-question mock exam from these sources. Mix multiple choice, short answer, and 2 long-form questions. Match the difficulty of a university final. Provide an answer key with explanations at the end."

Better than any past paper.
3. The Feynman Tutor

"Explain [topic] to me like I'm 12. Then explain it like I'm an undergrad. Then like I'm a PhD student. Use only the sources I uploaded. Flag where simplifications break down."

3 levels of depth from the same material.
4. The Socratic Tutor

"Don't give me answers. Ask me questions one at a time about [topic] using only my sources. After each answer, tell me what I got right, what I missed, and ask a harder follow-up."

This is how Oxford tutors actually teach.
5. The Flashcard Factory

"Generate 50 Anki-ready flashcards from these sources. Format as Q on one line, A on the next. Cover definitions, formulas, dates, mechanisms, and one 'why does this matter' card per topic."

Paste straight into Anki. Done.
6. The Connection Mapper

"Find every concept in these sources that connects to [topic X]. Show me how they relate. Include surprising or non-obvious links the textbook didn't explicitly draw."

This is where real understanding happens.
7. The Exam Predictor

"Based on these lecture slides and past papers, predict the 10 most likely exam questions. Rank by probability. Explain why each is likely based on emphasis, repetition, or examiner patterns."

Scary accurate when you upload past papers too.
8. The Paper Decoder

"Summarize this paper in 4 parts: what they did, how they did it, what they found, why it matters. Then list 3 limitations the authors downplayed and 3 follow-up questions a reviewer would ask."

Turns 30-page papers into 5-minute reads.
9. The Podcast Brief

Before hitting Audio Overview, paste this:

"Focus the podcast on [specific topic]. Make it debate-style. One host should challenge the other's interpretations. Target an audience that already knows the basics."

Default podcasts are mid. This fixes them.
10. The Comparator

"Compare and contrast [concept A] and [concept B] using only my sources. Build a table: definition, mechanism, use case, limitations, common confusion points. End with the one sentence that captures the core difference."

Killer for biology, econ, and law.
11. The Weakness Finder

"Quiz me on [topic] with 15 questions of increasing difficulty. Track which ones I get wrong. At the end, tell me exactly which subtopics I'm weakest on and what to re-read in my sources."

Diagnostic > brute force studying.
12. The Lit Review

"Across all uploaded papers, identify: shared findings, contradictions, methodological differences, and gaps in the literature. Cite which paper says what. End with the 3 open questions the field hasn't answered."

Saves grad students weeks.
13. The One-Page Cheat Sheet

"Compress everything in these sources into a single-page cheat sheet. Include only what would appear on a final exam. Use bullet points, formulas, and diagrams. No filler sentences."

The night-before-exam prompt.
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More from @thisguyknowsai

May 5
After 6 months of running a "weekly review" with Claude, I've made fewer decisions and gotten more done than the previous 5 years combined.

Here are the 8 prompts that drive the whole system: Image
Prompt 1: The Friction Audit

"Look at my last 7 days of calendar, notes, and tasks. Identify the 3 places I lost the most energy. Tell me which ones were necessary and which ones I should have killed on Monday."

This single prompt has saved me 6+ hours every single week.
Prompt 2: The Decision Inventory

"List every decision I made this week that took longer than 10 minutes. Categorize each as reversible or irreversible. For the reversible ones, tell me why I overthought them."

I went from 40+ decisions a week to under 12.
Read 10 tweets
May 4
A Yale behavioral scientist published a journaling protocol called "Prospective Hindsight Prompting."

You write from the perspective of your future self looking back at this year.

It's the single most useful thing I've done with Claude.

Here's the exact prompt:
First, why this works when normal journaling doesn't.

Regular journaling asks: what do I want?

Prospective Hindsight asks: what would I regret not doing?

Those are completely different questions. And your brain answers them completely differently.

The research behind it comes from Gary Klein's work on pre-mortems. When you imagine failure has already happened, your brain stops defending your plan and starts telling you the truth about it.

Yale researchers took that same mechanism and flipped it for personal clarity.

Write as if the year already happened. Write as if you already lived it.

The honesty that comes out will shock you.
Here is the exact prompt I use inside Claude:

Prompt:

"You are my future self writing a private journal entry on December 31st of this year. The year went remarkably well. Not perfectly, but the things that mattered most actually happened. Write a 400-word reflection in first person. Name 3 specific things I did that made the difference. Name 1 thing I almost didn't do but pushed through anyway. Name 1 thing I let go of that I was holding too tightly. Write it like a real journal entry, not a motivational speech. Use specific details. Make it feel true."

Read it twice. The second time, underline anything that surprises you.

Those are your real priorities. Not the ones on your to-do list.
Read 9 tweets
Apr 27
Google’s NotebookLM just exposed how broken textbooks are.

Turn any boring PDF into:

- mind maps
- quizzes
- timelines
- audio lessons
- personalized examples

Here are 10 prompts to build your own AI tutor for free ↓ Image
1. Turn the PDF into a personal tutor

Prompt:

“Act as my personal tutor for this source. Teach me the material step by step like I’m a beginner, but don’t dumb it down. Start with the core idea, then explain the supporting concepts, then give me a simple example, then test me with one question.”
2. Make a mind map

Prompt:

“Turn this source into a visual mind map. Put the main topic in the center, then create branches for the key concepts, sub-concepts, examples, definitions, and relationships. Show me how everything connects instead of listing random bullet points.”
Read 13 tweets
Apr 25
If you read books and forget everything, this is for you.

NotebookLM can turn any book into action plans, memory notes, and usable insights.

Here are 12 prompts: Image
1. The Core Argument Extractor

Paste:

“What is the single central argument of this book? State it in 2 clear sentences. Then list the 5 strongest supporting ideas.”

If you can’t explain the book simply, you never really learned it.
2. The Chapter Distiller

Paste:

“Summarize each chapter into the one idea worth remembering a year from now.”

This removes filler.

Only signal remains.
Read 15 tweets
Apr 22
Laid-off engineer went from 0 interviews to 12 offers in 6 weeks.

He didn't apply to more jobs. He built an AI workflow that turned every application into 8 minutes of work.

Here's the exact system he used (steal it):
Most people job hunting do this:

→ Spend 2 hours per application
→ Send 5 per day, burn out by Friday
→ Get ghosted by 90% of them

He flipped the entire process. Built 3 AI agents that do the heavy lifting so he only shows up for the parts that actually matter.
1. Resume Tailoring Agent

He pastes the job description into Claude and runs one prompt:

"Rewrite my resume to match this JD. Keep every bullet truthful. Rank my experience by relevance to this role. Flag any gap between my profile and their requirements so I can address it in the cover letter."

Output in 90 seconds. Reads like he spent 3 hours on it.
Read 9 tweets
Apr 18
Claude can now help you write like the best writers alive using the exact rules George Orwell outlined in Politics and the English Language.

Here are 10 prompts that apply his rules to anything you write and eliminate every habit that makes your writing invisible (Save this) Image
Orwell wrote Politics and the English Language in 1946.

It is still the most useful thing ever written about writing.

Not because it teaches you to write beautifully. Because it teaches you to stop writing badly which is a completely different problem and a much more common one.

His argument was simple and brutal: most bad writing isn't a failure of intelligence. It's a failure of honesty. Vague language exists to protect the writer from saying something that can be challenged. Jargon exists to perform expertise instead of demonstrate it. Passive voice exists to remove the person responsible for the action.

When you strip all of that out, what remains either means something or it doesn't. There is nowhere left to hide.

These 10 prompts apply his 6 rules to your writing not as suggestions, but as a systematic audit that leaves you with no cover.

One rule at a time. One piece at a time.
1. The Dead Metaphor Hunt

Orwell's first rule: never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech you are used to seeing in print.

A metaphor you've read a hundred times does zero work. The reader's brain skips it entirely. It's filler wearing the costume of vivid language.

"Read the following piece of writing and find every metaphor, simile, and figure of speech I used.

For each one, tell me: is this something I've seen in print before or did I construct it specifically for this idea? If it's borrowed, flag it as a dead metaphor and suggest the literal alternative that says the same thing in plain language.

Then find the one place where a genuinely original image would do the most work and write it.

Do not rewrite the whole piece. Only operate on the figures of speech.

Here is the text: [paste]"Image
Read 13 tweets

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