ChatGPT writes in a finished voice. The voice is the problem. A cancellation fee, a payroll service, or a discount can sound as settled as a sentence you actually decided. The check is how you tell those apart before a client, or a client of your client, treats the draft as true.
This pass is the same whether you are saving time on your own quotes or earning money by delivering a page, a pack, a FAQ, a checklist, or a workshop. Those two uses of AI are different jobs, and the main guide keeps them separate. The check is shared. If you skip it, you are asking the client to edit for you, which is a different price and a different offer.
The model cannot complete this pass. You can ask it to list the claims in a draft, and that list is a helpful index. The list is not verification. Verification is you, with the brief open, saying yes or no to each line.
Do the pass in this order
Order matters because a beautiful voice edit is a waste of time on a draft that still contains a false price. Read once for the story, then hunt.
- Read the draft once, as the customer, without the prompt open. Notice what it promises.
- Fact sweep. Names, numbers, dates, inclusions, and policies, each one traced to the brief.
- Invention sweep. Testimonials, guarantees, credentials, tools the business does not use, and “typical” prices.
- Promise sweep. Anything the draft commits a person to do, pay, or be responsible for.
- Voice. Only after the facts are stable, cut the sentences you would not say.
- Privacy sweep. What you pasted, what the draft still contains, and what should never have entered the chat.
- Ownership sweep. Whose words and materials these are.
- A sign-off line you write yourself, in the checks file, before you call it final.
Fact sweep
Open the brief beside the draft. For a quote, circle every number and date. For a service page, underline every inclusion. For a FAQ, highlight every rule. If you cannot point to the note that supports a sentence, the sentence is not ready. Replace it with a blank and a question, or delete it.
- Proper nouns: business name, person, neighborhood, product. Models misspell and they also swap in a more famous name.
- Numbers: prices, hours, percentages, quantities, durations. A rounded number is a different number.
- Dates and deadlines. “This week” is a date. If you did not mean one, take it out.
- Policies. Cancellation, refunds, what is included, who brings what.
Invention sweep
Some additions are easy to miss because they are the sort of sentence that appears on ordinary websites. That is why they show up. Treat these as guilty until you can see them in the brief.
- Testimonials, ratings, “customers say,” and case-study results.
- Years in business, certifications, awards, and partnerships.
- Guarantees and superlatives: best, fastest, guaranteed, proven.
- Software the business does not use. The checklist example in the main guide is a fictional stall that was given a loyalty app it does not have.
- Extra services that make the offer sound larger. Payroll added to a bookkeeping page. Catering added to a café. A discount added to a cleaning quote.
Promise sweep
Read only the verbs that bind someone. “We include,” “you will receive,” “I can start,” “the fee is,” “we never.” Each one is a promise. Ask whether the person who has to keep it agreed to that verb. If the draft promises a result they do not control, such as revenue, rankings, or a fixed amount of time saved, delete it even if it sounds motivating. This site does not publish income guarantees, and your client work should not sneak one in through a draft.
Voice, after the facts
When the facts are stable, read the draft aloud. Cut a sentence you would not say at a kitchen table. Keep the client's phrases when they gave you some. Do not let this step become a reason to skip the fact sweep. Fluency is what you are correcting, not what you are chasing.
Privacy sweep
Look at what you pasted, not only at what came back. The draft can be clean while the chat still holds a customer's address, a child's name, a tax detail, or an inbox export. Assume a chat can be stored. How long, and whether it is used to improve a product, depends on the account and on OpenAI's current policy. This guide does not name the current toggles. They change, and they were not re-checked while writing this. Read the policy on openai.com before you paste client material, and tell the client you are using a chat tool.
- If a fact is not needed for the deliverable, do not paste it. Alarm codes, card numbers, medical notes, identity documents, and photos of children are the obvious list. Most deliverables in the main guide do not need them.
- Anonymize before you paste: “the customer,” not a name; a neighborhood, not a key-safe location, unless the location is essential and the client agreed.
- If you already pasted something you should not have, delete it in the product if the product allows deletion, and tell the client what happened. Do not quietly hope.
- Do not paste a full mailbox “so the model can learn the voice.” Paste three sentences the owner is proud of, with permission, or describe the voice in your own notes.
Ownership sweep
This is not legal advice. Laws differ, and a contract beats a rule of thumb. The working rules below prevent the ordinary mistakes.
- The client's name, notes, existing website copy, old proposals, and customer messages are theirs. You use them to do the job. You do not publish them as your sample.
- The finished deliverable belongs to whoever your agreement says. If you have no agreement, do not assume you can show the work in public.
- Your prompts and your folder method can stay yours if the agreement says the client is buying the document or the session, not your process. Say that in the email, in plain language.
- Do not ask the model to imitate a living writer's style, and do not paste a copyrighted article and ask for a close paraphrase you will sell. Use the client's own notes.
- If the job depends on a trademark, a contract dispute, or text you suspect the client does not own, stop and suggest they get advice from a qualified person. Do not let a draft paper over that.
A claim log, with the limit stated
This prompt turns a draft into a list you can check. It will miss things, and it will sometimes call a true sentence a claim in a vague way. That is fine. You are the one who marks each line supported, unsupported, or needs the owner. Paste the draft you are about to send, not the client's raw files. If the draft still contains a secret, remove the secret before you paste it again.
Prompt
List the claims so I can verify them
Copies the prompt only. This site never receives it.
List the factual claims, promises, and proper nouns in the draft below. Do not correct the draft. Do not add new facts. Do not assume any claim is true. For each item, give: - The exact phrase - The type: number, date, proper noun, inclusion, exclusion, policy, promise, testimonial, credential, or other - A blank I will fill: SUPPORTED, UNSUPPORTED, or NEEDS OWNER If you are unsure whether a phrase is a claim, include it. End with a count of items. Draft:
A fictional pass on a bad FAQ draft
The line you write yourself
At the bottom of the checks file, write one sentence in your own words, not the model's: “I compared the draft to the brief on [date]. The figures and policies match the notes. The owner still needs to confirm: [list].”
If the list of confirmations is the whole draft, you are not ready to send it. Send the questions instead. A short email that asks for the cancellation rule is a better delivery than a polished rule you made up.
When the right result is to refuse the job
- You do not understand the subject well enough to know a wrong answer. A fluent medical, legal, tax, or safety draft is a trap when you cannot grade it.
- The client wants you to hide that a model was used.
- The client wants a guarantee of revenue, rankings, or leads.
- The source material is an inbox, a customer database, or a stack of documents they cannot explain their right to use.
- You are being asked to document a dangerous procedure you are not qualified to check.
Declining is part of the service, especially while you are new. The setup guide treats “practice again” as a normal outcome. The quote guide is a good place to practice this pass on your own business, where a slipped number costs you directly.
Use it on a real draft this week
Take one email you were about to send, or the practice final in your folder, and run the order above without skipping to voice. Keep the checks file. The next draft goes faster when you can see the kind of sentence this model adds for you, specifically, rather than the kind it adds in an article.
The same pass applies to a prompt from the library’s delivery checks or from the free PDF. A printable prompt does not make the draft true.