The Two-Pass Prompt: Generate, Critique, Improve (and Ship Better Output)

You know the feeling: you ask for a solution, you get something plausible , and five minutes later you realize it’s subtly wrong. The fix isn’t “write a longer prompt.” It’s to stop treating the first answer as shippable. I use a simple workflow I call the Two-Pass Prompt : Generate an answer (fast, concrete) Critique it against explicit checks (ruthless) Improve it into a final output (patch-ready) This is model-agnostic and works for code, docs, tickets, and even product decisions. Why two passes beat one Most failures aren’t because the model “doesn’t know.” They’re because: you didn’t specify a success condition the answer didn’t get pressure-tested the model optimized for fluency , not correctness A second pass gives you something you usually only get from humans: review . The trick is to make the review structured and non-optional. The template (copy/paste) Pass 1 — Generate ROLE: You are a senior engineer. TASK: Produce the best first draft. OUTPUT: <whatever format you need> CO