Turn a dead end into a search plan
Lesson 1 of 6 · Find the owner nobody can find
1 · Learn the move · Flipped interaction
When the letter comes back undeliverable and the paid trace returns dead numbers, the tempting prompt is 'find this owner.' The model cannot search a county. What it can do is produce a plausible name, a plausible address and a plausible story about a death, and all three read exactly like research. Turn it around. Make it interview you, one question at a time, about what you actually hold and what you already tried, and stop when it has enough. Then it writes a search plan: the records to pull, in order, what each one would establish and what it cannot. The plan is the product. The owner's name comes from the records, later, not from the chat.
I have hit a dead end finding an owner. Do not guess who or where they are. Interview me first: one question at a time, about what records I hold and what I have tried, and stop when you have enough. Then give me a search plan - record, office that keeps it, what it would establish, what it cannot.
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
Your letter to the owner of record on parcel 22-0918-004 in Brannock County came back marked undeliverable. The tax bill goes to a post office box, the deed is from 1994, and the trace you bought returned three numbers: two disconnected, one answered by a stranger. Write the prompt that makes the model plan the search instead of inventing the answer.
Write the prompt for this scenario as given, or swap in a real one from your own work. The score works the same either way.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
Optional. These shape the output when you run your prompt below, not your score.