To be able to write the most productive queries in Halcyon, you first need to understand how the system works.
When you run a query, Halcyon follows a two-step process to provide a well-researched response. First, it searches your filtered documents for the most relevant information — including text, images, tables and charts — to use in response to your question.
Then, AI extracts that relevant information and uses it to generate a query response, providing citations back to the original source material.
How to write better prompts
Writing effective prompts is a skill, but with practice, one that is relatively quickly mastered. Some questions to consider when writing your prompts:
- Does my prompt contain all the necessary context for the system to accurately answer my question?
- Does my prompt request contain totality language like “all information” or “all instances of”?
- Could my prompt be reduced to simpler, more direct information extraction requests?
- Oftentimes if you get results you don’t like, iterate with your search rather than refining your prompt.
Let’s go into detail about each of these guidelines:
Query context
Imagine you’re asking a brand new intern to do some research for you. What context would you need to include for them to be successful? Consider that the Halcyon app is like an intern that doesn’t know what you don’t tell it. Make sure to include all relevant details in your query.
Instead of this:
Can utilities own batteries?
Try this:
Do California investor-owned utilities have programs that allow them to own batteries at customers' homes in wildfire danger zones?
Totality queries
The system will find many examples of information related to your question, but it currently doesn’t execute an exhaustive search for all instances. For example, asking questions about all transmission lines will not yield a comprehensive study of all transmission lines. Asking for examples of notable transmission development typically yields more useful information that can guide further research.
Instead of this:
Find me regulatory filings associated with solar projects in California that have not been built.
Try this:
Find me some examples of regulatory filings associated with solar projects in California that have not been built.
Simplify, simplify, simplify
Once you’ve included all the necessary context, and avoided asking totality queries — now your best bet is to simplify. Breaking a research question apart into its component queries is a good way to narrow your query and get more meaningful results.
Instead of this:
I'd like you to find other parties that support or object to anything I may have said in my positions. Also, separately, please compile similar comments that parties have made and categorize them by topic.
Try this:
Summarize this comment and state whether or not it supports allowing data centers to "bring their own capacity."
Other tips and tricks
- Want a shorter response? Add “Be brief.” at the end of your prompt.
- Need to know about a specific utility? Add the name of that utility into your prompt. Hint: sometimes the regulatory record references the legal operating name like Northern States Power dba Xcel Energy in the Midwest.
- Want a scannable list of insights? Add “Structure your answer in a bulleted list.” to the end of your prompt.
- When possible, use proper nouns and spell out acronyms
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