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Pre-Hackathon – Prompt Pack

Pre-Hackathon Prep — Illuminate AI
Pre-Hackathon Prompt Pack
Pre-Hackathon Prep

Your prompt pack for the
run-up to the Hackathon.

Five activities. Ready-to-use prompts for each one. Swap in your idea wherever you see highlighted placeholders — the more specific you make them, the better the output.

How to use this. Each section is a self-contained prompt set for one of the five pre-Hackathon activities. Pick the variant that fits where you are with your idea, copy the prompt, paste it into your AI tool of choice, and replace the [bracketed placeholders] with your own detail. Save the prompts that work. Your prompt library is part of what you're building before the Hackathon.

Personas at the table

Run your idea past the people who'll push back on it — before they do in the room. Your AI plays the role. You get the hard questions in private first.

The CFO
Interrogate on cost, ROI, and risk
For when you need to stress-test the financial case before it lands in front of someone who controls the budget.
Act as a sceptical CFO at a mid-sized professional services company. I'm going to pitch you an idea and I want you to interrogate it on cost, ROI, and risk. Don't be polite — be the version of the CFO who has seen fifty initiatives fail and is tired of being asked to fund the fifty-first. Here's the idea: [paste your project brief or describe your idea in 3–4 sentences] Give me your three hardest questions and, for each one, what answer would actually satisfy you.
The End User
Hear it from the person who has to live with it
Simulate the reaction of someone in your impacted user group — sceptical, busy, and not particularly excited about another initiative.
Act as [a customer service agent / an R&D scientist / a sales executive — pick your impacted user]. You've just been told that your team is going to start using AI to [describe the change your idea creates]. Your first reaction is sceptical. You're busy, you've seen initiatives come and go, and your main concern is whether this will actually make your day easier or just add another thing to learn. Tell me: what are your three biggest concerns? What would need to be true for you to genuinely adopt this? And what's the one thing that would make you champion it to your colleagues?
The Sceptic
Steelman the case against
Get the five strongest objections to your idea before someone else does it for you.
I want you to steelman the case against my idea. Not to be difficult — but because I'd rather hear the objections now than in front of a room at the Hackathon. Here's the idea: [describe it] Give me the five strongest arguments against it. Be specific — not "it might not work" but exactly why and how it might not work, and what that failure would look like in practice.
The Champion
Hear the best version of your pitch
Useful if you want to hear what the idea sounds like when someone who believes in it makes the case — then steal the best lines for your own pitch.
Act as someone who loves this idea and has been asked to brief a senior stakeholder on why it deserves funding and resource. The idea: [describe it] Give me the pitch. Two minutes, verbal, no slides. Compelling, specific, no waffle. End with a clear ask.

Pre-mortem

It's six months from the Hackathon. The POC is over. It didn't work. Run this before the Hackathon, not after.

Full pre-mortem
Five failure modes, before you build
The most thorough version — surfaces the risks in detail, with early warning signs and what to do differently from day one.
I want to run a pre-mortem on my idea before I build it. The idea: [describe it] Assume it's now six months after launch and the initiative has failed. Usage has dropped off, stakeholders are disappointed, and there's a post-mortem meeting in the diary. Walk me through the five most likely reasons it failed. For each one: what the failure mode looks like, what the early warning signs were that we ignored, and what we should have done differently at the start.
Adoption failure
The specific risk of "yes in the room, no in practice"
For when your biggest worry isn't whether the thing works, but whether people will actually use it after the Hackathon.
My idea is [describe it]. The thing I'm most worried about is that people won't actually use it — they'll say yes in the room and then revert to their old habits within a fortnight. What are the three most common reasons AI tool adoption fails inside organisations? For each one, tell me what it looks like in [your function / company type] specifically, and give me one concrete thing I can build into the Hackathon sprint to reduce that risk.
Quick version
One question, ten minutes
When you've got limited time and just want the single biggest risk named.
One question: if this idea fails, what's the single most likely reason? Be brutally honest. The idea: [describe it in two sentences]

Stress-test the IDEA

Check your idea against all four criteria before the Hackathon. Impacted user group. Doable in the time you have. Evidence. Adoptable.

Full IDEA check
All four criteria, honest assessment
The complete stress-test. Runs your idea against every criterion and tells you where it passes, partially passes, or fails.
I want to pressure-test my idea against four criteria before the Hackathon. The idea: [describe it] The four criteria are: • I — Impacted user group: Is the group specific enough, large enough, and ready for this? • D — Doable in the time you have: Can a pair realistically build something meaningful during the Hackathon? • E — Evidence: Do I have the data and insight to make this real, or am I working on assumptions? • A — Adoptable: Will the team actually use this after the Hackathon, or will it stall at POC? For each criterion, tell me: does my idea pass, partially pass, or fail — and why? Don't be kind. Tell me where it wobbles.
Find the weak link
One criterion, focused fix
When you already have a hunch about where the idea wobbles and want targeted advice on shoring it up.
Look at my idea and tell me which of the four IDEA criteria is the weakest link. Just one. Then tell me what I'd need to do or find or build in the next [X weeks] to shore it up before the Hackathon. The idea: [describe it]
Scope check
Find the MVP if "Doable" is your wobble
For ideas that feel too big for the time available — helps you find the version that's still valuable but actually buildable.
My idea is [describe it]. I'm not sure it's scoped tightly enough to be buildable during the Hackathon. Help me identify the smallest version of this idea that would still demonstrate real value. What's the MVP? What do I cut, and what's non-negotiable?

Draft the internal pitch

The business case you'll need. Written in language your stakeholders will actually read — not the language you use to explain it to yourself.

The one-pager
A full business case, one page
The core document. Works best when you've loaded your AI workspace with data, a brief, and the business case template.
Write a one-page business case for this initiative. The audience is [my line manager / the exec team / a functional lead who controls the budget]. Here's what I know so far: [paste your project brief, or describe the idea, the problem it solves, and any data you have] Use plain English. Be specific about numbers where I've given you them. Be honest about what we don't know yet. End with a single clear ask.
Stakeholder-specific
Tailored to the person who needs to say yes
When you know exactly who you're pitching to and what they care about.
I need to get [name or role]'s buy-in for this idea before the Hackathon. They care most about [cost / risk / speed / customer impact]. The idea: [describe it] Write me a three-paragraph briefing note aimed specifically at what they care about. Open with the problem as they experience it, not as I experience it.
Why now
The paragraph that justifies the timing
Often the hardest part of a pitch to write. This gets it done.
I have the what and the how for my idea. What I'm struggling to articulate is the why now — why this matters this year, not in six months. Here's the context: [describe your idea and anything relevant about what's changing in your business or sector] Write me a single compelling paragraph that answers the "why now" question for a sceptical senior stakeholder.
Pre-empt objections
Bake the answers into the pitch
Run your draft through this once you have it — surfaces the gaps before the room does.
Here's my draft pitch for the idea: [paste your draft] Read it as a senior stakeholder who's seen plenty of AI initiatives that didn't deliver. What are the three objections you'd raise — and for each one, write me a one-sentence response I can add to the pitch to pre-empt them.

Capture into your project

Don't lose what you find. Transcripts, notes, interview snippets, data — capture everything relevant before the Hackathon. These prompts help you turn raw material into something your AI tool can actually use.

Structure rough notes
Turn a messy brain dump into a clean file
After a conversation, a voice memo, or a scribbled notepad. Gets it into a format your AI workspace can use.
Here are my rough notes from a conversation about my idea. They're messy — please don't judge me. [Paste notes / transcript] Pull out: the key insights, any specific data or quotes worth keeping, any open questions I need to answer, and any actions that were implied but not written down. Format it so I can load it into my AI workspace.
Turn an interview into evidence
Extract what matters from a stakeholder conversation
For after you've spoken to an end user, subject matter expert, or sponsor.
I just spoke to [a potential end user / a subject matter expert / a stakeholder]. Here are my notes from the conversation. [Paste notes] Summarise what I learned in four bullet points. Then tell me: what does this add to the case for my idea, and what does it complicate?
Sense-check your project
Find what's missing before the Hackathon
Run this once you think your AI workspace is loaded. It'll tell you what it wishes it had.
Here's everything I've loaded into my project so far: [briefly describe the files — e.g. a project brief, some meeting notes, a bit of data] What's missing? If I were going to walk into the Hackathon and ask you to help me build something real, what context would you wish you had that isn't here yet?
Build your context pack
Your AI interviews you, then writes the doc
No idea where to start? This prompt gets your AI to ask you the right questions and turn your answers into a finished context pack.
I want to create a context pack for my project so that you understand my world before I press send on anything. Ask me the questions you'd need answered to build it. One at a time. I'll answer each one, and at the end, turn my answers into a clean context pack document I can save into my project.