Prompt sets

The buyer questions Popcorn asks, as TOML files in your config repo, with ids that keep their history.

Each file in your config repo’s prompt-sets/ is one category of buyer questions. Popcorn only reads them, so change one with a pull request, after popcorn check.

Format

id = "ai-search-visibility"       # never change it: runs and rankings key on it
name = "Finding out whether AI assistants recommend us"
tier = "core"                     # core: daily, full samples. plg: every tiers.plg.every_days, one sample
description = """What the category is, who is competing for it, and what the brand claims."""

[[prompts]]
id = "find-whether-chatgpt-recommends-product"
text = "How can I find out whether ChatGPT recommends my product when people ask about my category?"

[[prompts]]
id = "recommended-versus-mentioned-ai-answers"
text = "What's the difference between being mentioned and being recommended in an AI answer?"
intent = "info"                   # asks to explain, not to choose: scored on named, not recommended

# Products the grader folds onto one canonical name, so share of voice counts "Peec" as Peec AI.
# Competitors every set shares go once in popcorn.toml; list one here only for this set.
[[competitors]]
name = "Peec AI"
aliases = ["Peec"]

Prompt ids are permanent

Results, trends and fix lists follow a prompt by its id, so:

• Same id, same question. Fixing a typo or rewording keeps the id: the prompt’s history carries on, marked as reworded that day. Asking something different gets a new id.
• Ids are unique across every set and never reused. Moving a prompt to another set keeps its id, and its history moves with it. Once removed, an id stays retired.
• Order in the file is only display order.

Say what a good answer looks like

Most questions ask an assistant to choose (“what should I use for…”, “X vs Y”), so the brand is scored on being recommended and being the top pick. A question that asks it to explain or how-to (“what is…”, “how do I…”) can be answered well without naming any product.

Mark those intent = "info". An info prompt is scored only on whether the brand is named or cited, and stays out of the recommended and top-pick rates, so a correct, product-free answer isn’t counted as a loss. The run page labels it, and the analyst reads it as “named or cited while explaining” rather than “lost the recommendation”.

Don’t reword an explanation question into “recommend a tool” to make it scoreable: that’s a different question, which needs a new id. Changing a prompt’s intent keeps its id and history, and the day it changes is marked like a reword; its rates before and after aren’t compared.

Competitors shared by every set

A competitor list that every set repeats goes once in popcorn.toml:

[[competitors]]
name = "Peec AI"
aliases = ["Peec", "peec.ai"]

Each set gets the shared list plus its own [[competitors]]; a set’s own entry for the same name wins. Moving a set’s competitors to the shared list changes nothing on the trend.

Reviewing prompts with Claude Code

The config template ships a review-prompts skill in .claude/skills/. Run /review-prompts in your config repo and Claude Code reviews each set as a measurement instrument: whether each prompt fits the set’s goal, whether it’s a selection or an info question, whether it hints at the brand, and what the set is missing. It reviews; it edits only when asked.

Changing a set doesn’t restart its trend

Rankings carry on through added, removed and reworded prompts, changed intents, new competitors and new answerer models, and each day says what changed since the day before. Comparisons with the day before only count the prompts both days asked, worded the same. Editing a set’s name, description or tier changes nothing.

What restarts a trend

Only a change to how answers are asked or graded starts a new trend; anything else carries the trend on, noted on the day it happened.

Before merging a config change, run popcorn plan on a checkout of main and one of the branch:

popcorn plan <checkout of main> <checkout of the branch>

It lists the prompts added, removed, reworded and moved, prompts whose intent changed, competitor and answerer changes, which of them start a trend over, ids that should have been kept, and the answers a day the new config asks for, as Markdown for the pull request.

Ask the way a buyer would

Only head-to-heads names the brand; in every other set it has to be named on its own merits. popcorn check enforces this, matching the brand name and aliases as whole words.

Write each question the way someone who has never heard of the brand would type it, and keep each set at 15–20 prompts so a rate means something.

Sets written before ids

Sets written before prompts had ids (prompts = ["...", "..."]) are converted by popcorn migrate-config <dir>, which makes an id from each prompt’s words; review them before committing.

Keep them public

Prompts are sent to every answerer’s provider on each run. Don’t put anything in them that isn’t public.