By the end you have your technicians listed with certificate, issuer and end date, and your sentence written with the five facts and today's date. Or you have marked what's missing from the sentence you already sent a client.
This morning's blog said a shop's "certified technicians" line should carry five facts: how many of how many, the full certificate, who issues it, the date it's valid through, and the date you wrote it.
Knowing the five takes a minute. The slow part is gathering each technician's certificate, reading who issued it, finding when it ends and writing a line that doesn't claim more than you hold. If you already sent one, the job is checking it against the five.
These two prompts do that. Neither one searches or verifies anything. They work only with what you paste, and what you don't give them stays in brackets.
What to have ready
- Any AI chat assistant. It doesn't need web search.
- For prompt 1: your technicians, with the full name of each certificate, the issuer and the end date, as it reads on the paper or on the issuer's page.
- For prompt 2: a sentence your shop sent a client, exactly as you sent it.
Prompt 1 - From roster to sentence
Here is the roster of technicians at my marine shop. Use only what I write below. Don't invent certificates, issuers, dates, years or headcounts: leave anything missing in [brackets]. If something isn't in what I gave you, don't fill it in from what you know about ABYC, NMEA, Yamaha, Mercury or anyone else.
- Total technicians working in the shop: [number]
- One technician per line, like this: name or initials - full name of the certificate - who issues it - valid until (or "don't know") - where the proof is (PDF, card, link, or "don't have it"):
[one line per technician; include people with no certificate, marked "no certificate"]
- Year the shop started operating, only if I can show it on paper: [year, or leave blank]
- Today's date: [date]
- Language of the sentence: [English, Spanish or both]
Give me:
1. A table with one row per technician and these columns: person - full certificate - issuer - expires - where the proof is. Anything I didn't give you goes in as [missing].
2. The shop's sentence, with five facts: how many of how many technicians hold that certificate, the full name of the certificate, who issues it, until when it's valid (the date of the one that ends first), and today's date as the date of the sentence. If there's more than one certificate, one sentence per certificate. Talk about technicians, never about a "certified shop". Don't use "years of experience" or "hundreds of boats": if I gave you a start year, write "Operating since [year]"; if not, leave it out. If a technician has no end date, don't use someone else's: leave [missing]. If any date has already passed as of today's date, tell me.
3. One line: which row of the table to fix first so the sentence can be checked.
What it's for: turns your list into a table and a sentence, and tells you which row to fix first. The sentence comes out with its five facts or with the gap in plain view, never with a number you couldn't show.
Why the prompt forbids filling in from what the tool knows: if a technician is "ABYC certified" and you don't know which certificate, an assistant can write a certificate name that sounds right but that this person doesn't hold. A bracket is better.
Prompt 2 - What's missing from the sentence you already sent
I'm going to paste a sentence my marine shop sent a client (in a quote, a message or a report). Check it against five facts, using only what the sentence says. Don't fill in anything from what you know about any certificate or issuer.
The five facts:
1. How many of how many technicians hold the certificate.
2. The full name of the certificate.
3. Who issues it (naming it is enough, even by initials; if it only says "the manufacturer" or "the brand", it's partial).
4. Until when it's valid.
5. The date the sentence was written.
If a fact is half there (for example, only the year it expires, no month), mark it "partial" and say what's missing.
Give me:
1. A table of the five facts: for each, "present", "missing" or "partial", and if present, the exact words from the sentence that state it, in quotes.
2. The words in the sentence that cover more than they say (for example "certified", "years of experience", "hundreds of boats") with no fact next to them. One line each.
3. A version of the sentence with the facts that are there and the missing ones as [brackets] for me to fill in. Don't invent any. Don't keep the words from point 2 as they are when they have no fact: remove them or swap them for [remove, or add the fact and its proof].
The sentence:
[paste the sentence exactly as you sent it]
What it's for: returns your sentence with a mark on each fact: present, missing or partial, with the exact words. And it points at the words that promise more than they say.
What it doesn't do: check that the certificate exists or is current. It only reads the sentence.
Tested on invented data
We ran the two final texts on October 28, 2026 in a Claude model, with invented data, no tools and no search. The shop and the technicians don't exist, and the dates are made up. What's quoted is the tool's output, copied from its answer; we only shortened long tables.
Prompt 1. An invented shop with 3 technicians: A.K. with an ABYC certificate valid to September 2029, D.B. with a Mercury certificate and no end date, C.W. with no certificate, and a start year of 2009 from the business license. Today's date was October 28, 2026. It returned the table with "[missing]" where a fact was absent and one sentence per certificate:
1 of our 3 technicians holds the ABYC Certified Technician, Marine Systems certificate, issued by ABYC and valid until September 2029. October 28, 2026. Operating since 2009.
It checked the dates against today's, and said what to fix first:
Date check: no date you gave has passed as of October 28, 2026. September 2029 is still ahead. D.B.'s expiry is unknown, so I can't say whether it has passed.
D.B.'s row. Get the expiry date off the card in the office, because the Mercury sentence can't be checked without it.
Prompt 2. The sentence was "Two of our three technicians hold ABYC Marine Systems certificates valid through 2029. Written October 12, 2026." It marked the count, the issuer and the date as present, and the certificate name and the end date as partial:
"valid through 2029". The month is missing, and "through 2029" can read as the end of the year.
Its rewrite:
"Two of our three technicians hold the [full name of the certificate], issued by ABYC, valid until [month] 2029. Written October 12, 2026."
Where it falls short
What you do now
Open the last quote or message where you wrote "certified technicians" and run prompt 2 on it. If facts are missing, build your technician list and run prompt 1.
Keep reading
- How to write "certified technicians" so a yacht owner can open it - this morning's blog, with the five-blank sentence
- It says "verified." Verified against what? - Wednesday's article, on reading the word when it's handed to you
