No-Prompt Prompting? So Lazy, It Just Might Work!

Sometimes, the best prompt is no prompt at all.

If you've been reading my ramblings for a while, you’ll know I prefer a “less is more” approach to prompting.

I often make the case for starting simple and iterating rather than having the prompts single-handedly do the heavy lifting.

I argued for shorter, more natural image prompts…

Bye, Splatterprompting. We Hardly Knew You.

…introduced the concept of the “minimum viable prompt”…

Minimum Viable Prompt: Your Cure for AI Overwhelm

…and showed you how to make chatbots do their own prompting:

“Help Me Help You.” How to Get AI Chatbots To Prompt Themselves.

In short, I firmly believe you can get plenty of value out of AI without lengthy prompts that look like legal contracts.

But guess what?

This simplification rabbit hole goes deeper than any of us could ever imagine.

What if I told you that you might not need a prompt at all?

No, I haven’t gone mad.

Yet.

Let me introduce you to this idea I call “no-prompt prompting” and why it might make sense.

What exactly is no-prompt prompting?

Uh, I mean, it’s like…when you just…don’t use a prompt.

That’s kind of it.

See you in the next post, bye!

Okay, so there’s a bit more to it.

Basically, there are certain situations where you can get away without a prompt.

If there is sufficient context, the AI model can infer what you need without preambles.

I stumbled upon this almost by accident.

As mentioned in “Here Are My Go-To AI Tools,” I often use the latest Gemini models in Google AI Studio as my beta readers for draft review and feedback.

Last week, when finalizing this Gemini 2.0 Flash article, I copy-pasted the entire text into the AI Studio:

This time, instead of adding the usual “Be my beta reader for the following post…” prompt at the top, I just hit “Enter” to see what would happen.

What happened was Gemini put on its Editor Hat™ and went into analysis mode all on its own:

Gemini touched upon areas it normally covers when acting as a beta reader and even followed a similar feedback structure. It inferred what I wanted without additional instructions.

Intrigued, I started thinking about other tasks where no-prompt prompting is an option. Let’s look at some candidates.

When does no-prompt prompting make sense?

No-prompt prompting isn’t always applicable.

In the vast majority of cases, you have to explicitly tell language models what you need from them.

No-prompt prompting works when an AI model's default response aligns naturally with what you’re looking for.

In my example, Gemini just so happened to treat copy-pasted article drafts by providing beta reader feedback by default. That’s exactly what I needed!

So if the content of what you paste or upload provides enough clues as to a relevant response, you have a solid candidate for a no-prompt approach.

Here are a few situations where you might give no-prompt prompting a try:

1. Summarizing a video call: It’s not far-fetched to expect most models to automatically provide a text summary for uploaded videos.

2. Getting a text description of an image: In the absence of a prompt, most models will default to simply describing any image you provide.

3. Troubleshooting error messages: Pasting a screenshot or text of the error will almost certainly put AI into problem-solving mode.

4. Identifying objects, animals, plants, etc: Language models are likely to mention the name of whatever it is you upload.

5. Translating signs, menus, etc. into the model’s default language: Uploading a photo of a foreign sign is likely to naturally trigger a translated answer.

6. Analyzing charts or Excel sheets: If the data points towards a clear conclusion or trend, an AI model might not need a prompt to start explaining it.

That’s far from an exhaustive list, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Having said that, why bother with no-prompt prompting in the first place?

Well…

The benefits of no-prompt prompting

No-prompt prompting has many of the same advantages as the minimum viable prompt.

1. Reduced entry barriers

Most people don’t see themselves as “prompt engineers.”

Newcomers might hesitate to try AI for fear of not knowing the right prompt or where to start.

With no-prompt prompting, you simply start with what you already have: Just copy-paste or upload your file, text, image, etc., and take it from there.

That’s it.

2. Speed and efficiency

It’s hard to get into a flow state when you constantly have to stop and think of what to tell a chatbot. No-prompt prompting solves this.

This is especially relevant for repetitive tasks that require you to perform the same action on multiple items (spreadsheets, images, documents, etc.). If your chosen AI model spits out the right info by default, you can get more work done faster.

3. Better understanding of AI models

I previously argued that detailed prompts tend to “mask” a model’s default behavior by steering it toward a specific corner of latent space. As a result, your prompt will almost certainly homogenize the output of different models and obscure any underlying differences in their capabilities.

This might be a good thing if you’re trying to standardize responses to fit into a predictable workflow.

But if you want to figure out a model’s intrinsic “personality,” no-prompt prompting is the way to go. (See the worked examples below.)

4. Creative exploration

Let’s face it: You might not always know exactly what you want to analyze in the first place. How will you ask AI for help if you can’t even formulate the question?

What’s that? “By using no-prompt prompting,” you say?

Wow, it’s as if you were reading this article the entire time!

But yes, you’re right—letting AI dive in without a preset path lets serendipity take its course and clears the way for creative answers. Who knows, AI might even consider angles or uncover insights that nudge you into exploring new directions.

5. Reduce response bias

You might think of yourself as the epitome of neutrality, but you’re probably not as impartial as you think. The way you phrase your prompt or question might ever-so-subtly hint at the kind of answer you’re expecting.

And that’s a problem.

You see, LLMs have psychopathic sycophantic tendencies. They’re trained to be helpful and make you happy. If they pick up even a whiff of hidden assumptions or expectations in your request, they might adjust the answer to align with those.

No-prompt prompting avoids this by presenting a maximally neutral context.

No-prompt prompting: Two worked examples

Here’s the thing: Prompt or no prompt, an LLM will always respond to whatever you paste or upload—it’s built to follow the question-answer pattern.

So even if it doesn’t perform the expected task, the model will ask you clarifying questions about your intent. In turn, those questions might serve as inspiration for further discussion.

I’m already an advocate for an iterative approach to working with LLMs. As such, I see no downside to using a promptless file or document as your point of entry into a conversation.

Let’s look at two examples that showcase the no-prompt approach and, conveniently, underscore benefit #3 above.

1. The watch photo

Here’s a random stock image of a watch from Pixabay:

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

And here’s what happens when I feed it sans prompt to GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash in Google AI Studio:

GPT-4o says…

This concise response is perfect if I just want to understand what I’m looking at.¹

Also, note the follow-up questions that may help me decide on the next steps.

Gemini 2.0 Flash says…

Whoa, way more text and nuance!

This is outstanding if I’m after a detailed alt text for an SEO page or a rich product description for an e-commerce site.

I’ve now learned more about these models’ default behavior and can decide which one is best for my needs.

2. The Titanic dataset

Let’s take this public dataset with Titanic passenger stats like gender, age, survival rates, and so on.

Not because we’re unfeeling monsters, but because it’s a data-rich CSV file that’s helpful for illustrating how AI models handle structured input.

Now, let’s throw the dataset at Claude 3.7 Sonnet and DeepSeek-R1, telling them nothing about our intentions.

Claude 3.7 Sonnet says…

Claude gives us a quick breakdown and some solid ideas for further analysis but doesn’t do any legwork by default.

DeepSeek-R1 says…

Yup, DeepSeek went ahead and just ran with the analysis, which makes sense given that it’s a reasoning model itching to extract insights.

If you have a large dataset but don’t know how to approach it, DeepSeek might just give you a good starting point.

Now go out there and use your newfound no-prompting powers for good, not evil!

🫵 Over to you…

What do you think of this no-prompt prompting concept? Yay? Nay? Meh?

Or maybe you’re already doing this and the entire idea is old hat to you. In any case, I’d love to know what you think.

Leave a comment or drop me a line at whytryai@substack.com.

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1. In this specific scenario, I somehow have never seen a watch before.