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Explain a Concept at Three Levels

Understand any topic step by step: a simple explanation, a deeper one, and an expert-level one, plus a quick self-check.

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Fill in each variable and watch the prompt update. Anything still in {{braces}} needs your input before you use it.

Fill in the blanks

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The topic you want to understand.

What you already know.

Why you're learning it — helps pick relevant examples.

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Explain {{concept}} at three levels of depth.

My background: {{background}}
Why I'm learning it: {{goal}}

**Level 1 — Simple:** Explain it to a curious 12-year-old in 3–4 sentences, using an everyday analogy.
**Level 2 — Student:** Explain how it actually works in one short paragraph, introducing the key terms and defining each one.
**Level 3 — Expert:** Give the precise, technical explanation in one short paragraph, including a common misconception and why it's wrong.

Finish with **Check yourself:** 2 short questions I can answer to see if I understood, with answers hidden at the very end under "Answers."

Keep everything accurate. If the topic has real scientific debate or uncertainty, say so briefly.
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Example

Example input

Filled prompt
Explain how vaccines train the immune system at three levels of depth.

My background: high-school biology, a long time ago
Why I'm learning it: I want to understand the news better and explain it to my kids

**Level 1 — Simple:** Explain it to a curious 12-year-old in 3–4 sentences, using an everyday analogy.
**Level 2 — Student:** Explain how it actually works in one short paragraph, introducing the key terms and defining each one.
**Level 3 — Expert:** Give the precise, technical explanation in one short paragraph, including a common misconception and why it's wrong.

Finish with **Check yourself:** 2 short questions I can answer to see if I understood, with answers hidden at the very end under "Answers."

Keep everything accurate. If the topic has real scientific debate or uncertainty, say so briefly.

Example output

Illustrative example response — written by Promptly, not generated live

Level 1 — Simple: Your body has a security team that learns to recognize germs. A vaccine is like showing the team a "wanted poster" of a germ — a harmless piece or weakened version — so they can memorize it. If the real germ ever shows up, the team recognizes it fast and stops it before you get very sick.

Level 2 — Student: Vaccines contain an antigen — a molecule (or instructions to make one) that the immune system recognizes as foreign. In response, B cells produce antibodies that bind to that antigen, and T cells help coordinate the response and destroy infected cells. Some of these cells become long-lived memory cells, so a later infection triggers a faster, stronger response.

Level 3 — Expert: Vaccination induces adaptive immunity via antigen presentation to naive lymphocytes, generating clonal expansion, affinity-matured antibodies, and memory B and T cell populations. Misconception: "Vaccines give you the disease." Most vaccines contain no live pathogen or only inactivated parts; live-attenuated vaccines use weakened strains that rarely cause illness in healthy people.

Check yourself:

  1. What does a "memory cell" do?
  2. What is an antigen?

Answers: 1. It remembers a germ so the body responds faster next time. 2. A molecule the immune system recognizes as foreign.

Why it works

Layered explanations let you climb from intuition to precision without getting lost, and you can stop at whichever level you need.

Sharing your background and goal helps the model choose relevant analogies. The misconception and self-check questions turn passive reading into active learning — and the accuracy instruction is a reminder that AI explanations should be cross-checked for important topics.

Techniques used