Don't Ask "Make This Better." Ask "What's the Weakest Paragraph?"

You finish a draft. It's close, but something's off. You paste it into Cowork and type the two words everyone types: "make this better." A few seconds later you get a new version back. It reads smoothly. It also reads like someone sanded off the corners: your one sharp line is gone, a stock transition has appeared, and the thing now sounds like every other competent paragraph on the internet.

You skim it, feel vaguely worse, and paste your original back in.

The tool didn't fail. The question did. "Make this better" is an instruction with no target, and a request with no target gets answered by averaging: Cowork reaches for the safest, most generic version of "good" because you didn't tell it which kind of better you meant.

The fix isn't a longer prompt. It's a sharper one.

#"Better" is four jobs wearing one coat

When you say "better," you usually mean one specific thing, but you haven't said which. Underneath that one word are at least four different jobs:

Clearer. The argument is muddy and you want it to land on the first read.