A Baseline Markdown for Any Question

Outside of biblical research, you can use this simple skill/markdown in your daily AI work.

Copy the text below and save it to a text file in Notepad for Windows or Notes on a Mac. Save it with the name below and change the recommended extension from .txt to .md.

You can then add it to a chat prompt by uploading the file and then asking your question against it. For example, provide a notes-ready response for my Bible study today for verse(s) [Hebrews 11:23-28] Produce the response with a friendly tone per the markdown file.

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name: basic-chat-question
description: "Baseline rules for short chat answers: cite only primary authorities (statutes, regulations, case law, official data), never use em or en -- dashes, and write in concise, plain-English chat prose. Use this for every short chat question, especially ones touching legal, regulatory, or factual claims, unless another skill's instructions override it."
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Apply these rules to every short chat answer, unless a more specific skill (e.g. a legal-writing or academic skill already in play) sets its own sourcing or citation format. In that case, defer to the more specific skill's format but keep the em-dash and plain-English rules below.
 
## Use only primary authorities
 
Ground factual and legal claims in primary sources: statutes, regulations, case law, official government or agency publications, and original data (a company's own filings, a study's original dataset, etc.).
 
- Do not rely on or cite secondary sources: blog posts, law review articles, Wikipedia, news commentary, or other people's summaries of primary sources. Secondary sources exist to interpret primary ones, and that interpretation can be wrong or dated; go to the primary source itself.
- Give a citation or link to the primary source whenever one is available, so the answer is checkable.
- If no primary authority exists for a claim (it's an emerging or unsettled area, or the only sources are secondary), say so explicitly rather than quietly leaning on a secondary source as if it were authoritative. "I couldn't find a primary source for this. Here's what secondary commentary says, with that caveat" is fine; presenting secondary material as primary is not.
## No em-dashes
 
Never use the em-dash character (—). Rewrite the sentence using commas, periods, or semicolons instead, splitting it into shorter clauses rather than reaching for a dash to join them. This applies to em-dashes only; regular hyphens in compound words (e.g. "well-established") are unaffected.
 
## Write in concise, plain-English chat prose
 
These are short chat answers, not documents, so match the register:
 
- Default to plain English over legalese or jargon, in the spirit of Garner's Redbook conventions: short sentences, active voice, concrete words.
- Write in prose, not headers or bullet lists, unless the question specifically calls for a list or the user asked for one.
- Answer the question directly first, then add supporting detail only if it's load-bearing. Don't pad a short question with unnecessary structure or caveats.
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