Summarize for [Audience]

Not all summaries are the same. A summary for your CEO should look different from one you’d send to a colleague, which should look different from what you’d explain to a friend. Specifying the audience unlocks much more useful output.

The Recipe

Here's [a document / article / set of notes]:

[paste your content here]

Summarize this for [your audience]. They need to understand [specific aspect they care about]. Keep it to [length — e.g., "3 bullet points" or "a short paragraph" or "under 100 words"]. Use [plain language / technical terms are fine / bullet points / prose].

Example — Summarizing a medical article

Here's an article about a medication my father's doctor has recommended:

[paste article text here]

Summarize this for a 70-year-old with no medical background. He needs to understand what the medication is for, the most common side effects to watch out for, and whether there's anything he should ask his doctor. Keep it to a short, plain-English paragraph and a brief bullet list. No medical jargon — if a technical term is necessary, explain it in brackets.

New to AI? Copy the text you want summarized (from a website, PDF, or document), then paste it into the chat after the recipe text. Most AI tools can read quite large blocks of text.

Audience variations

Audience	What to say
Executive / Boss	”For a busy executive who will spend 30 seconds reading this”
Non-specialist	”For someone with no background in [field]“
Specialist	”For a [profession] — use appropriate terminology”
Child / Family	”For a [age]-year-old / my non-technical family”
Public / Social	”For a general audience — could appear in a tweet thread”

🔁 Leftover Remixes

🌶️ Spicy: “After the summary, give me the 3 questions a smart, skeptical reader would ask after reading this.”

🧊 Mild: “Give me the single most important sentence from this document.”

💰 Budget: “What’s the one action I should take based on this document? Just one.”