GPT-Dot gave me a generic answer when I asked it to turn my troubleshooting notes into a checklist. I tried adding context and spelling out the format, but it still missed the steps I needed. What setup should I try before spending more time rewriting each request?
A cleaner-looking checklist can make missing steps harder to notice. I’d focus your setup on making omissions visible, rather than adding more background or stricter formatting. Treat this as converting your notes, not asking it to write general troubleshooting advice.
Start with a short set of notes where you know what the finished checklist should contain. Number the source lines and provide a small example of the conversion you want. Include a conditional step in that example, such as “if the connection test fails, check the cable before restarting.” That gives you a way to check whether it preserves the decision and the order, instead of reducing everything to “check connectivity.”
For a reusable instruction, I’d try: “Convert these notes into a checklist using only the supplied information. Preserve every action, prerequisite, warning, verification step, and if/then condition. Keep the original order unless the notes explicitly specify a different sequence. Attach the source line numbers to each checklist item. Do not silently merge steps or add standard troubleshooting advice. Put unclear or conflicting instructions under ‘Needs clarification.’ At the end, list any source lines not represented in the checklist and explain why.” Review that last section yourself rather than treating its coverage check as proof.
If it still drops steps, split the job: ask for an extraction of actions and conditions first, then have it format the approved extraction. That separates misunderstanding the notes from losing information during formatting. Keep whichever instruction and example work as a saved template, then test them on a different set of notes without tweaking them. If you still have to reconstruct the checklist each time, I wouldn’t keep investing in setup for this task. The useful threshold is less review work, not a nicer first draft.
Do not allow a record of everything you attempted result in a set of instructions for repeating all dead ends. The source-line approach works well in terms of omissions, but I would first ask whether you want a recap of incident or a description of a procedure that can be reused. In case of the latter, label your notes as diagnostic check, failed attempt, and confirmed fix and ask it to highlight any entries the role of which is unclear before finalizing the draft.
You can spend more time preparing the notes than writing the checklist yourself. Labeling the attempts helps, but I’d first try a small excerpt with one checklist item written exactly how you want it, including the expected result. If it still drops essential steps from that sample, I wouldn’t keep piling on setup.
If the steps you expect to see are implied rather than explicitly listed you won’t get the same benefit from a stricter conversion prompt that you might get for missing instructions. I’d contrast an omitted checklist task against the explicit note that it should have been based on. ‘Restart the service’ vanishing is a missing instruction, expecting the checklist to explain which one, on which machine and how to verify it’s restarted is a different request.
That’s where I’d qualify the source line approach, checking for coverage (which isn’t the same as coverage). A checklist for you might leave out some information that a checklist for your replacement will need to include. You could keep every line you wrote but still end up with a list your replacement can’t follow.
To provide setup I’d focus on describing the reader and what they can be expected to know rather than including more general background information. Something like ‘This is for my replacement who knows the tools but wasn’t involved in this incident. Please flag anywhere the process requires knowledge beyond these notes.’ It gives you a concrete way to provide context rather than guess at what background information might be relevant.
I’d separate out the responsibility for those two tasks. Converting explicit notes into a checklist should require little back and forth. Converting your personal shorthand into a handoff procedure reasonably involves questions. If the steps you wanted to see had been explicitly listed but still vanished I wouldn’t blame it on a lack of setup on your part.
Whether you pasted the notes or attached a file matters here. If you used an attachment, I’d check what text it can read before spending more time on instructions. A better checklist prompt won’t fix missing input.
Pick a passage containing a step it omitted and ask it to quote that passage exactly, including the surrounding lines. This is different from asking it to extract the actions. You’re checking whether the source text is available at all, before asking it to interpret anything. If it can’t reproduce the passage, paste that section directly and retry.
The source-line approach assumes there’s a usable source on its side. I’d establish that first, particularly if your notes include screenshots, tables, or comments rather than plain paragraphs. No need to label and reorganize the entire document just to run this check.
If the directly pasted section works, you have a narrower problem to investigate: how you’re supplying the notes. If it quotes the missing instruction correctly and then leaves it out of the checklist anyway, you can stop troubleshooting the attachment. Those are different failures, and “add more context” doesn’t tell you which one you have.