A great Plynn prompt does three things: it tells us what you want to learn, who you are relative to the topic, and what quality matters to you. The more of those three you cover, the less Plynn has to guess - and guesses are how courses go from useful to mediocre.

This guide walks through one canonical prompt with every signal annotated, two shorter prompts in different shapes, and the ten levers you can pull. None of it is required. All of it is leverage.

The canonical prompt

"I'm an [1] intermediate Python developer working on [2] fine-tuning small open-source LLMs for a [3] side project. Cover [4] LoRA, QLoRA, dataset prep, and when to fine-tune vs. just prompt - [5] about an hour total. [6] The space moves fast, so prefer content from the last six months. I like [7] Sam Witteveen's [8] hands-on style if anything from him fits."

What each phrase does:

  1. Skill level - keeps Plynn from serving "what is a transformer" to someone fluent.

  2. Topic - the subject. Drives the search.

  3. Context / motivation - tilts framing toward practical use, not academic survey.

  4. Concepts - four concepts, four lessons. One-to-one mapping.

  5. Time budget - caps per-lesson video length so the system picks tighter videos.

  6. Recency stance - for fast-moving topics, this is the difference between current best practice and a 2023 walkthrough that no longer applies.

  7. Preferred creator - favored when their content ranks well on the rest.

  8. Format preference - nudges selection toward demos and code-along.

Two shorter prompts in different shapes

Terse, technical, Core only. Short isn't vague when the Core signals are filled.

"Teach me Postgres window functions - PARTITION BY, frame clauses, and LAG/ LEAD. Intermediate, 30 minutes."

Topic, three concepts, skill level, time budget. Done.

Non-technical, with constraints. Plynn isn't engineer-only, and constraints aren't just version numbers.

"I want to start investing in low-cost index funds. Cover what an index fund actually is, how to compare expense ratios, and the difference between ETFs and mutual funds. Beginner, 45 minutes. Prefer US-focused content since I file taxes here."