AI That Actually Works: The Prompt Frameworks Book

AI That Actually Works is a practical book by Gethyn Ellis that fixes stalled AI adoption at its real cause: poor prompts. It teaches a system of prompt frameworks, from the Core Five to an extended library, plus a 90-day rollout plan to take AI from a few enthusiasts to everyday use across your organisation.

The reason your AI rollout has stalled

You have bought the licences. You have run the enablement session. And yet most of your people still use Copilot as expensive autocomplete, get a bland answer back, and quietly go back to the old way of working.

That is not a technology problem. The model is fine, the licence is fine, the integration works. What is missing is the skill to ask the tool for something useful, and a shared way of doing it so that skill does not live in only two or three people's heads. The quality you get out of an AI tool is directly related to the quality of what you put in. This book is the system that fixes the input.

What is inside the book

This is a working system, not a glossary. It moves from the simplest prompting structures through to a full organisational rollout.

• The Core Five. The frameworks that handle the bulk of everyday work: RTF, BAB, CARE, CRIT and RISE. Learn these and you cover most of what a typical knowledge worker needs.
• The extended library. More specialised structures for when the Core Five are not enough, including CO-STAR, RODES and APE, each mapped to the job it suits.
• Advanced techniques. How to combine, chain and refine prompts for harder, multi-step outputs rather than one-shot requests.
• The adoption playbook. A 90-day rollout plan for moving from individual habit to organisational practice, with reuse-ready appendices and prompt templates you can lift straight into your own enablement.

The adoption playbook is the part most books on this subject leave out, and the part technology leaders find most useful, because it answers the real question: how do I get this to stick across a business.

Who it is for

The book serves two readers at once.

If you are a CIO, IT director or technology leader who has invested in Copilot and needs that investment to turn into real use rather than a line item nobody can justify at renewal, the playbook is written for you.

If you are anyone who sits in front of an AI tool wondering what to write, the frameworks work the same whether you are drafting a board paper, cleaning up a spreadsheet or writing a difficult email. No technical background required. You need a structure, and the book gives you eight of them.

Rolling this out across a team or organisation

Reading the book will sharpen one person's prompting. Embedding it across a workforce is a different job, and it is the work I do with clients directly. If you want the frameworks and the 90-day playbook turned into a structured programme for your people, with facilitated sessions and materials built around your tools, that is what the AI enablement programme is for.

See how the AI enablement programme works.

Common questions