The Valley · Satire
San Francisco Man Explains Why His Prompt Is Different
The 31-year-old, who describes himself as a 'builder,' says his approach to querying large language models sets him apart from the 200 million other people doing the same thing.
SAN FRANCISCO — Local entrepreneur and self-described prompt engineer Derek Vanderholm, 31, wants the world to know that his system prompt is fundamentally different from everyone else’s.
“Most people just ask ChatGPT things,” said Vanderholm, adjusting the brim of a hat that said ‘SHIP IT’ in block letters. “I’ve developed a methodology. I call it Recursive Intention Scaffolding, or RIS.”
RIS, as Vanderholm explained it over the course of forty-five minutes at a coffee shop near his co-working space, involves telling the model to “take a deep breath” before responding, followed by a detailed persona specification and several nested XML tags.
“The model knows I’m serious,” he said. “You can feel it in the responses.”
When asked what he uses this methodology for, Vanderholm produced his phone to show a conversation in which he had asked Claude to help him write a cold email to investors.
“I’m building in the agentic space,” he added.
At press time, Vanderholm was seen adding “Prompt Engineer” to his LinkedIn profile.
