Give the task
clearer direction.

CLEAR is a prompting framework developed by Leo S. Lo and published in The Journal of Academic Librarianship in 2023. Its five principles are Concise, Logical, Explicit, Adaptive, and Reflective.

How to use CLEAR to improve an AI prompt.

CLEAR offers five principles for prompting. Use them to state the task, examine the response, and make a more informed next attempt.

Concise

Remove unnecessary wording. Keep the information the task actually needs.

Logical

Organize the request in a sensible sequence. Make relationships and dependencies clear.

Explicit

State the purpose, audience, constraints, and expected output instead of leaving them implicit.

Adaptive

Adjust your request in response to what the system produces and what the task requires.

Reflective

Examine the result and your own approach. Decide what worked, what failed, and what to change.

An example: planning an AI literacy workshop.

More specific instructions can make a response more useful. They do not guarantee that it is accurate. Use CARE to examine what comes back.

CLEAR in institutional guides.

The UVA profile of Leo S. Lo reports that CLEAR appears in 200 or more institutional guides worldwide. The links below are selected examples, rather than a complete inventory.

• University of Hong Kong: AI Literacy Prompt Guide

  Explains the CLEAR principles and includes prompting examples.

• UNED, Spain: Diseño de prompts

  Introduces CLEAR in a Spanish-language guide to academic AI use.

What CLEAR does not guarantee.

A well-structured prompt can still produce an inaccurate, biased, or incomplete answer. Check the evidence and suitability of the response before relying on it.