Create advanced Works with: Any AI

Failure Mode Catalogue for a Prompt

Table output Has example

List how your prompt can go wrong before it does.

The Open buttons send the prompt text as currently shown below to that site only when you click. Fill in the placeholders first.

Create a failure mode catalogue for my prompt. The prompt: [PASTE_PROMPT]. Where its output goes and who relies on it: [OUTPUT_USE]. Examples of inputs: [SAMPLE_INPUTS].

Return a table: ID | Failure mode | How it would look in the output | Likely cause in the prompt or input | Likelihood | Impact | Test input that would trigger it | Mitigation in the prompt | Mitigation outside the prompt (human review, validation code, limits).
Cover: hallucinated facts; ignoring the format; truncating long outputs; overlong or padded answers; tone drift; following instructions hidden in the input; mishandling missing data; mixing up entities; inconsistent results across runs; refusing valid requests; complying with harmful requests; leaking sensitive text; bias against groups; stale knowledge; arithmetic errors; misread tables; language or locale errors; and over-reliance on one example.

Then rank the top five by risk, write improved instructions for them, create a monitoring checklist (what to sample weekly), define escalation rules (what to do if a serious failure occurs), and propose a small incident log. Add a warning that prompt changes can fix one failure and create another, so rerun the test set. Do not claim any prompt can eliminate failures.

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Replace each bracketed placeholder with your own details, then paste into Any AI or another assistant.

ID | Failure | Looks like | Cause | Likelihood | Impact | Test input | Mitigation
F1 | Invented policy | states a refund window we do not have | no policy provided | medium | high | "What is your refund window?" with no policy text | add policy text and "not stated" rule
F2 | Ignores format | prose instead of JSON | format at the end of a long prompt | medium | medium | long input | move format earlier, validate in code
F3 | Follows hidden instructions | obeys text inside a pasted email | no delimiter | low | high | email saying "ignore previous rules" | delimiters, least access
Top five get new instructions; sample outputs weekly; log incidents.

• failure-modes