Prompt Writing Tips
7 min read
Good prompts produce good campaigns. This guide covers what Cycle AI knows about your store, what a well-formed prompt looks like, and a library of examples you can adapt for common scenarios.
What Cycle AI Already Knows #
You don’t need to explain your store — Cycle AI receives a full context snapshot every time you start a new conversation. It already has:
| Context | What’s included |
|---|---|
| Store basics | Name, URL, currency, timezone, current date, and base country (so “in my country” resolves correctly) |
| Catalog | Up to 250 products with IDs, names, prices, category IDs, stock status |
| Categories | Every category with product counts |
| Tags | Up to 50 product tags with product counts (so “the summer tag” resolves to the right one) |
| Available user roles | Every role registered on your store including custom roles from other plugins (so “wholesale customers” resolves to whatever slug you actually use) |
| Product segments | Bestsellers, slow movers, new arrivals |
| Stock summary | Aggregate stock health (low-stock and out-of-stock counts) |
| Upcoming events | Holidays and major shopping events for your locale |
| Current campaigns | All active, scheduled, and draft campaigns with IDs, names, statuses |
That means you can refer to your products by name, mention categories, say “my bestsellers”, or reference “next Friday” — Cycle AI resolves all of those from its context.
What Makes a Good Prompt #
A strong prompt usually covers three things:
- Who — what products or scope
- What — the discount type and rough size
- When — timing or duration
You don’t need all three. Cycle AI fills in missing pieces with reasonable defaults based on your store. But the more you specify, the closer the first draft lands to what you want.
Weak prompt #
“Do a sale.”
The AI will make something — but the product scope, discount, and timing are all guesses.
Better prompt #
“25% off T-shirts next weekend.”
Clear scope, clear discount, clear timing. The AI resolves “T-shirts” to your T-shirt category and “next weekend” to the correct dates in your timezone.
Even better #
“Run a 25% off flash sale on T-shirts next weekend — Saturday to Sunday only. Badge text ‘FLASH’.”
Adds duration specificity and creative direction.
Prompt Recipes #
Percentage off a category #
“20% off all shoes for 7 days.”
Fixed amount off #
“$5 off every product under $20 for the next 5 days.”
BOGO #
“Buy 2 get 1 free on T-shirts this weekend.”
Tiered volume (Pro) #
“Volume discount on coffee beans: 10% off at 3+ bags, 20% off at 6+ bags.”
Spend threshold (Pro) #
“Spend $100 get 10% off, spend $200 get 20% off — for 2 weeks.”
Clearance the slow movers #
“40% off my slow movers for 10 days — clear out old inventory.”
Promote bestsellers #
“Push my bestsellers with a 15% discount through the end of the month.”
Holiday-tied campaign #
“Black Friday sale — 30% off everything, Friday through Monday.”
Cycle AI knows Black Friday’s date from its calendar context, so it’ll schedule correctly for the current year.
Flash sale #
“48-hour flash sale, 35% off new arrivals.”
Weekend recurring (Pro) #
“Every weekend, 10% off bestsellers — Friday through Sunday.”
Seasonal kickoff #
“Summer kickoff — 20% off swimwear and shorts, starts next Monday for 3 weeks.”
Bundle (Pro) #
“Bundle deal — 15% off when customers buy a shirt and a pair of pants together.”
Tag-based targeting #
“Promote my summer tag — 20% off everything tagged ‘summer’ for two weeks.”
The AI matches the tag against your store’s actual tag list. Tag and category targeting can combine — “25% off T-shirts tagged clearance” intersects both.
User-role targeting #
“20% off all products for wholesale customers only.”
“Exclude logged-in users from this Black Friday campaign — guests-only.”
The AI picks the role slug from your store’s actual role list (including custom roles from other plugins). If you ask for a role that doesn’t exist on your store, you’ll see an adjustment notice.
Country / location targeting #
“25% off everything, only in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.”
“Exclude US shoppers — based on shipping address, not billing.”
Use country names or ISO-2 codes. Default source is “billing or shipping”; specify “billing” or “shipping” if you need only one.
Time-of-day window #
“Happy hour — 30% off bestsellers, every Friday from 6pm to midnight, until June 30.”
The AI converts 12-hour phrasing (“6pm” → 18:00, “midnight” → 00:00). Omit the time-of-day to run the whole day.
Recurring schedule details #
“Every Monday for the next 4 weeks — 10% off all categories.”
“Monthly clearance on the first of each month, runs until December 31.”
“Every weekend — Saturday and Sunday — 15% off T-shirts.”
Patterns: daily / weekly (with day-of-week) / monthly. End conditions: “for N cycles”, “until DATE”, or open-ended.
Free shipping #
“15% off plus free shipping on all orders, this weekend only.”
Triggers a free-shipping reward alongside the discount, applied to all your shipping methods. (For “free shipping over $X” spend-threshold campaigns, see the Pro spend-threshold recipe above.)
Smart product selection #
“30% off my best sellers for the next 10 days.”
“Clearance on low-stock products — 40% off, 7 days.”
“Promote new arrivals with 15% off until end of month.”
The AI picks an automatic product picker (best_sellers / featured / low_stock / new_arrivals) instead of a static list — products refresh as your store changes.
Random selection #
“Surprise sale — 25% off 5 random products from my catalog.”
Use “random N products” for individual product picks. For “random N categories” the AI picks N category IDs at random and applies the discount to all products in them.
Badge customization #
“30% off swimwear with a green badge that says SUMMER, top-left.”
Specify color (color names like “red” / “green” or hex), position (top-left/top-right/bottom-left/bottom-right), and custom text. Defaults to red top-right with auto-generated text. Say “hide the badge” to disable it entirely.
Product rotation #
“20% off random T-shirts, rotate the picks every 12 hours.”
Useful for variety — the active product set refreshes on the interval you specify (1–168 hours).
Save as draft #
“Create a 25% Black Friday campaign but save it as a draft — I want to review before launching.”
Timezone override #
“Schedule a 24-hour flash sale in Europe/Berlin time, starting next Friday at 6pm.”
Use IANA timezone identifiers (Europe/Paris, America/New_York, Asia/Tokyo). The AI uses your store timezone by default.
Being Specific About Scope #
The most common reason a draft misses the mark is ambiguous scope. Phrases like “some products” or “a few items” force the AI to guess. Try these instead:
| Vague | Specific |
|---|---|
| “Some products” | “All T-shirts”, “My bestsellers”, “Products under $30” |
| “The old stuff” | “My slow movers”, “Clearance category”, “Products with stock under 5” |
| “New things” | “New arrivals”, “Products added this month” |
| “Everything but X” | “All products except the Premium category” |
Being Specific About Timing #
Cycle AI understands both absolute and relative dates:
| Style | Example |
|---|---|
| Absolute | “From March 15 to March 22” |
| Relative | “Next weekend”, “Starting tomorrow”, “For 10 days” |
| Holiday-based | “Through Black Friday weekend”, “Until Christmas Eve” |
| Open-ended | “Starting today, runs until I stop it” (creates an indefinite campaign) |
| Recurring (Pro) | “Every Friday to Sunday”, “First Monday of each month” |
Common Patterns That Work Well #
“Imagine I was telling my marketing person” #
Write the prompt the way you’d brief a human. “Run a 25% off summer sale on T-shirts for the next two weeks, with a badge that says ‘SUMMER'” works better than “25 pct t shirts 14d”.
Anchor to a goal #
Cycle AI reads intent. “Clear out last season’s inventory” or “Get customers to add more to cart” hint at the right discount type. “Encourage bulk buys” often produces tiered pricing. “Drive weekend traffic” produces short flash sales.
Use the suggestion cards as scaffolding #
Click a suggestion, let the AI generate a draft, then refine from there. Faster than composing a long prompt from scratch.
Refine instead of rewriting #
If the first draft is 80% right, don’t retype the whole prompt — say “change the discount to 30%” and keep the rest. Refinements are cheap (no quota cost) and preserve the parts you liked.
Patterns to Avoid #
- Don’t use product SKUs or IDs in prompts. Cycle AI refers to products by name. SKUs and internal IDs may not be in its context.
- Don’t ask for customer-specific discounts. Cycle AI doesn’t have customer data — no names, emails, order history. It can’t create “10% off for Jane Smith” type campaigns.
- Don’t ask for coupon-style codes. Cycle AI creates automatic price-rule campaigns, not WooCommerce coupons with codes to type at checkout.
- Don’t include sensitive data. Your prompt is sent to a third-party AI. Treat it like you’d treat a message to an external marketing consultant.
- Don’t over-specify for the first prompt. A 400-character first prompt with every detail often produces stiffer results than a shorter one followed by refinements. Let the AI propose, then steer.
Reading the Reasoning #
Every preview card includes a collapsible Reasoning section. Expand it to see why the AI made its choices:
Chose 25% off because your T-shirt category ranges from $18–$35, and a flat 25% keeps average-price items above the “psychological $15 floor” your bestsellers cluster around. 7-day duration matches your typical mid-season sale length. Badge set to “SUMMER” to tie into the upcoming solstice event in your calendar.
Reading reasoning a few times will calibrate your sense of what the AI picks up on — and help you write sharper prompts in the future.
When to Skip Cycle AI #
Cycle AI is great for the common cases. For these, the wizard is usually faster:
- You need very specific product IDs or SKUs selected by hand
- You’re configuring complex recurring patterns with specific days and end conditions
- You need fine-grained control over BOGO/tiered/threshold configurations (AI gets the shape right, but exact tier boundaries are easier to type)
- You’re cloning an existing campaign — “Duplicate” is already one click
A typical pattern: use Cycle AI to get a 90% draft fast, then fine-tune the last 10% in the wizard before launching.
