Staring at a blank page? "Interview me" — that single line changes everything. Ben Tossell used this one sentence to build an entire course curriculum from scratch.
What Is This?
When we use AI, we typically go: "Do this," "Make that." We give direct instructions. But here's the thing — when you don't know exactly what you want, you can't give instructions. That's exactly why the blank page feels so terrifying.
The Agent Interview pattern flips this around. Instead of you instructing the AI, the AI asks you questions. "Your task is to interview me and get all the information you need to [your task]" — that single line is the entire prompt.
Ben Tossell (Ben's Bites, 150K+ subscribers) shared this pattern and it blew up. He was building a course called "Fork Off" for non-coders learning to build with AI, and he was stuck on how to structure the curriculum. So he told Claude:
"Interview me so we can flesh out the course content map — a hierarchical overview of the topics to cover, with some bullets on the points to cover."
— Ben Tossell, Ben's Bites
The agent fired 20 questions at him, and Ben just answered naturally. What surprised him was that the AI probed on its own — asking clarifications like "do you actually mean route A or route B?" The result? A hierarchical content map with topics and detailed bullet points.
His honest take is what makes this real — "Even if on first glance I know I'm going to remove/merge/edit a lot, I'm moving forward."
Why Does This Matter?
Here's why this pattern is so powerful, compared side by side.
| Direct Instruction | Interview Pattern | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | You must know what you want | Don't need to — AI asks |
| Output quality | Depends on your prompt skills | AI finds missing context |
| Blank page anxiety | Still there | Gone after the first question |
| Context transfer | Only what you think to include | Extracts things you didn't know you knew |
| Time investment | 30+ min writing prompts | 10–15 min conversation |
Dan Shipper (co-founder of Every) gives the same advice — "Just say, 'This is the kind of person I am; these are my tasks. Interview me to help figure out where I can use you.' Just spend time with it and play around." That's the key insight. The skill isn't writing great prompts — it's having great conversations.
Every's AI style guide team adopted this pattern as an official workflow. "Don't try to write a style guide from a blank page. Let AI interview you" — they found that extracting tone, structure, sentence rhythm, and disliked patterns through questions is far more effective than self-describing.
Mark Hinkle uses this pattern for "workflow codification." He runs four newsletters reaching 250K subscribers, and cut his weekly production time from 8–10 hours to about 2 hours. The secret? Telling AI to "ask me questions about my weekly workflow, one at a time." That's how he identified which processes to systematize.
How to Get Started
- Copy the base prompt
Use this exact line:Your task is to interview me and get all the information you need to [your goal]. Ask me one question at a time.
Just swap out "[your goal]." - Add one line of context
Something like "I'm a [role] who wants to [outcome]." Keep it short. The AI will dig deeper through questions. - Answer honestly
Don't polish your answers. Say what comes to mind, even the stuff you think might be irrelevant. The agent will filter. Ben set the expectation with "I may disregard questions but I will say why." - Get structured output
Once the interview wraps up, ask the AI to organize everything. The first output won't be perfect — that's normal. Delete, merge, edit. You're already moving forward. - Save it as a skill for recurring tasks
Store interview results in Claude Skills or ChatGPT Projects, and you'll never have to explain the same thing twice. Teach once, use forever.
3 Copy-Paste Prompts
Course/content planning: "I am writing a course on [topic]. Interview me so we can flesh out the course content map — a hierarchical overview of the topics to cover."
Writing style extraction: "I want you to help me create an AI style guide for my writing. Interview me to extract the information you'll need — tone, structure, sentence rhythm, things I hate in AI-generated prose."
Workflow codification: "Interview me to help identify the best candidate workflow to codify with AI. Ask me one question at a time about my weekly tasks, how long each takes, and where I add unique judgment vs. just executing."
