Email Reply Prompt: Answer Everything Asked

What this prompt does

An email reply prompt turns an email you've received into a reply that answers everything the sender asked: it lists their asks and any deadline first, quoting the sentence each came from, then writes the reply from the answers you type as shorthand bullets, in the order the questions were raised. You paste the email and your answers. The model does the reading and the wording. What it doesn't do is answer for you: an ask you left blank comes back as a bracketed question in the draft, never as an invented date or figure.

Half of all email replies go out within 47 minutes of the message arriving, and half run under 43 words, according to a 2015 study of 16 billion emails by Farshad Kooti and colleagues at USC's Information Sciences Institute and Yahoo Labs. The typing was never the slow part. What stalls a reply is working out what the sender wants, which is why a four-paragraph client email gets reread on Tuesday and answered on Thursday while "yes, Tuesday works" goes out in a minute.

So this prompt front-loads the reading. Before it writes a word, it tells you what the email is asking, what it assumes, and which date is hiding in paragraph three.

Four neighbours take the cases this page doesn't. The tone adjustment prompt fixes a reply you've already written that came out wrong. The polite decline email prompt takes over when the answer to the main ask is no. Refund requests belong to the refund request response prompt, public reviews to the customer review response prompt. This page is for the rest of the inbox, which is most of it.

The prompt

Below is an email I need to answer, followed by my answers. Read the email first, then write the reply from my answers only.

<email>
[PASTE THE EMAIL — the whole thread if it's a reply to a reply, earlier messages included]
</email>

**Who they are to me:** [CLIENT / COLLEAGUE / SUPPLIER / MY MANAGER / SOMEONE I'VE NEVER MET — and how formal we've been so far]
**My answers, one per ask, in shorthand:** [e.g. "headcount 84", "go with option B", "can't do Friday, Monday 6th works". Write "don't know yet" or "skip" where that's the truth]
**Not for this email:** [ANYTHING I WON'T COMMIT TO HERE — a price, a date, a decision that's someone else's]
**How I sound:** [PASTE 2–3 EMAILS I'VE SENT, or one line such as "short and friendly" or "formal, first contact"]
**Length cap:** [DEFAULT: shorter than their email]

Do this in order:

1. List every ask in the email as a numbered line, quoting the sentence it comes from. Include the ones phrased as statements ("it would be great if…") and the ones in a P.S. Then, on their own lines: any deadline or date they mention, and anything they've assumed I already agreed to.
2. Write the reply. Answer the asks in the order they were raised, one or two sentences each. Open with the answer to the main ask, not with thanks for their email. Where one of my bullets answers an ask, use it. Where none does, write [YOUR ANSWER: ask 3] in the reply and leave it there. Never fill a gap with a plausible date, figure or promise.
3. Under the reply, one line, "Commits me to:", listing every date, amount and action the reply contains, so I can check each against my bullets before sending.

Rules:
- Every fact in the reply comes from my bullets or from their email. Nothing else.
- If I pasted emails I've sent, match their greeting, sign-off and sentence length. If not, write plain and warm.
- Keep the reply shorter than the email it answers unless my bullets need more room.
- Their questions get answers, not acknowledgements. "I'll look into the invoice" does not answer "has the invoice been paid?"

How to use it

1. Paste the whole thread, not the last message. The ask is often in the message before ("as I mentioned, we'd need it by the 2nd"), and the model can't see what you didn't paste. Anthropic's prompting guidance says to put long inputs at the top of the prompt, above the instructions, which is why the email goes first and your answers after.
2. Answer in shorthand. "84", "option B", "Mon 6th not Fri" is all it needs. Full sentences in the bullets mean you've drafted the reply yourself and are paying the model to retype it. The bullets are decisions. The prose is its job.
3. Read the ask list before you read the reply. Step 1 is the useful half. When it lists five asks and you typed three answers, you've found the two you were about to forget, and the draft carries a bracketed placeholder where each goes. Fill it, or drop the ask on purpose.
4. Leave gaps as gaps. "Don't know yet" is a legitimate bullet, and the reply turns it into "I'll confirm the AV package by Wednesday" only if you gave it Wednesday. Anthropic's guidance on reducing hallucinations makes the same two moves: give the model permission to say it doesn't know, and restrict it to the information you provided. A reply that invents a delivery date has made a promise in your name.
5. Read the "Commits me to" line, then send. If a date or figure there isn't in your bullets, the model added it. Cut it.

Example output (partial)

Inputs: Dana runs operations for a 30-person events agency and is answering a venue manager's 210-word email about a client dinner on 16 October. Her bullets: "final headcount 84", "AV: package B", "insurance cert: our broker sends it, Monday 5th", "coat check: skip". Thread pasted in full, two of her own emails for voice, cap shorter than theirs.

What they're asking

1. Final headcount by Friday 2 October: "the kitchen needs final numbers by Friday the 2nd."
2. Which AV package: "let us know whether you'd like package A or B set up."
3. Insurance certificate: "we'll also need your public liability certificate before the event."
4. Coat check, from the P.S.: "shall we staff the cloakroom? It's £120 for the evening."
5. Assumed, not asked: guests arriving at 6:30 pm. "As discussed, doors at 6:30."

Deadline: Friday 2 October for the headcount. No date given for the certificate.

Reply

Hi Marcus,

Final headcount is 84, so you're clear for the kitchen ahead of Friday. Please set up AV package B.

Our broker will send the public liability certificate straight to you on Monday 5 October; tell me if you need it sooner and I'll chase it. We'll skip the cloakroom.

[YOUR ANSWER: ask 5, doors at 6:30 pm. Confirm or correct.]

Thanks, Dana

Commits me to: headcount 84, no changes after Friday 2 October; certificate arriving Monday 5 October; chasing the broker if Marcus asks.

The venue's email was 210 words; the reply is 51 without the placeholder. The fifth line of the ask list is the one Dana would have missed: the 6:30 wasn't a question, so nothing in her bullets covered it, and the draft holds the bracket until she does. A mismatch there surfaces on the night, with 84 people in the lobby.

Variations

The client's two-line answer

A client forwards you an email with "tell them fine, but not before the 10th" at the top. That line is your bullets. Add "You're replying as [CLIENT NAME]. Treat my bullets as their words and expand them into a reply without adding a reason, an apology or an offer they didn't give." For a client you write as every week, the brand voice prompt turns three of their emails into a reusable voice block, so the samples input stops being a hunt through their sent folder.

The email with seven questions

Add "Mirror their structure: if they numbered their questions, number the answers the same way." A long email from a procurement team or a lawyer is a form, and a form gets filled in rather than summarised. Numbered answers also make a missing one obvious to both of you.

The holding reply

Add "I can answer asks 1 and 2 now. Answer those in full, then say when I'll answer the rest using the date in my bullets, with nothing about why." The same 2015 study found that as daily email load rose, people replied to fewer messages and wrote shorter replies without replying more slowly. A short answer today is the norm; the complete one on Thursday is what people resent.

When the email can't be settled by email

Add "Their main ask needs a conversation. Answer what can be answered, then propose a call, offering the two times in my bullets." If the call is the whole point, the meeting request email prompt writes the proper version, purpose and length stated so the yes is easy.

Common pitfalls

• Don't paste the email without answers. The model will answer it anyway, plausibly, and the answers are yours in the recipient's eyes. The bullets are the whole point.
• Don't open with thanks. "Thank you for your email" is the sentence people skip to find the answer. The prompt opens on the main ask; keep it there when you edit.
• Don't let a placeholder through. A bracket in a sent email is worse than a missing answer. Search the draft for "[" before you copy it.
• Don't skip the thread. A reply to a reply carries agreements from three messages ago, and the model only holds the ones you pasted.

Who uses this prompt

• Virtual assistants running several inboxes: forty replies a week in four patterns, each in a different client's voice. See prompts for virtual assistants.
• Managers: the request from another team with three asks in it and a date in the last line. See prompts for managers.
• Small business owners: the supplier, the landlord, the customer who wants four things confirmed before ordering. See prompts for small business owners.
• Consultants: the client email that reads as a status question and is actually a scope request. See prompts for consultants.

The starter version of this prompt lives in our prompt engineering guide for beginners: three lines asking what the sender wants, what deadline is in there, and for a reply under 100 words. This page is what it grew into once it met real inboxes: bullets, so the answers are yours; a quoted ask list, so nothing in paragraph three gets missed; a placeholder rule, so nothing gets invented.

ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all run it unmodified. The <email> tags around the pasted message follow Anthropic's advice to wrap each kind of input in its own tag so the model can tell your instructions from the sender's, and the quoted ask list is their "ground responses in quotes" technique applied to a 200-word email instead of a 200-page report. Across those 16 billion emails, the single most common reply length was five words. This prompt is for the other kind: the email you've reread three times and still haven't answered, because the reading was the work.