Stop organizing your prompts by topic. Organize them by verb.

I've been reusing prompts heavily across ChatGPT and Claude for about a year. The thing that finally made my library actually usable wasn't a better tool — it was one change in how I categorized things. (Full disclosure since it's relevant: I ended up building a small tool around exactly this workflow. Not going to link it in the post — happy to drop it in a comment if anyone wants it, but the system above stands on its own.) Most people file prompts by subject: a "Marketing" pile, a "Coding" pile, a "Research" pile. It doesn't scale, because the same subject shows up everywhere and you can never find the one you want. What actually reuses well is the action. Summarize, critique, rewrite, extract, explain, plan. The verb is the reusable unit — the topic is just a variable you swap in. 1. Folder taxonomy by action Drafting/ -> generate first-pass content Editing/ -> critique, tighten, rewrite for tone Extraction/ -> pull structure out of messy input Explaining/ -> teach a concept at a level Planning/ -> break a goal into steps Meta/ -> prompts that write or improve prompts Everything I write drops cleanly into one of these, and I can always find it because I'm searching by what I'm trying to do, not what it's about. 2. Write each prompt as a template with variables The unlock is placeholders. Write the prompt once with fill-in blanks, and one template becomes a hundred prompts. A few of mine, steal freely: Critique (Editing/) Act as a skeptical {role} reviewing this {artifact}. List the 3 weakest points, the single assumption most likely to be wrong, and what you'd cut. Be specific and quote the text. Draft: {draft} Explain (Explaining/) You're an expert in {field}. Explain {concept} to a {audience_level} audience. Use 2 concrete analogies, define any jargon, and end with the misconception people most often get wrong. Rewrite for tone (Editing/) Rewrite the text below in a {tone} tone for {audience}. Keep it under {word_count} words, preserve every fact, and flag anything that reads as unsupported. Text: {text} 3. Chain them for multi-step work Most real work is a pipeline, not one prompt: Research -> Outline -> Draft -> Critique -> Polish I keep each step as its own saved prompt and walk through them in order. The Critique step is usually a call to my Editing/ template above. This is where the verb-based system pays off — every step is just "which action am I doing now." That's the whole thing. You can run it with plain folders and a notes app — no tooling required. Curious how others here structure their libraries, especially if you've found a better cut than action-based. submitted by /u/Former-Potential-878 [link] [comments]