The Semantic Control Board
Most people think prompting AI is about what you ask.
It's actually about how you ask—down to individual word choices that most users never think twice about.
After three years of full-time AI collaboration—building iOS apps, Vision Pro apps, and web applications as a solo developer—I started noticing something strange. Certain words consistently produced different types of responses. Not just different content. Different modes of thinking.
I called this discovery The Semantic Menu.
Why Individual Words Matter
Here's what's happening under the hood:
AI doesn't "understand" language the way you do. It predicts what comes next based on statistical patterns learned from billions of text examples.
Every word you type shifts the probability landscape. Most words nudge slightly—they make certain responses marginally more or less likely. But some words act as cognitive switches. They dramatically redirect the AI toward completely different regions of its training data.
Think of it like tuning a radio. Most adjustments barely change the station. But hit certain frequencies and you jump to an entirely different broadcast.
The trick is knowing which words are switches—and what they switch to.
The Three Categories of Trigger Words
In the book, I map out dozens of these semantic triggers. They fall into three broad categories:
1. Quantity Triggers (The Shotgun)
Goal: Generate volume. Get options. Cast a wide net.
Key words: Various, multiple, diverse, range, spectrum, alternatives, possibilities
What happens: The AI shifts into brainstorming mode. It prioritizes breadth over depth. You get more ideas, more angles, more options to choose from.
When to use: Early in a project when you need raw material. When you're stuck and need to break out of a narrow frame. When you genuinely don't know what direction to go.
Safety state: Low risk. The AI feels safe generating volume because none of it is "the answer"—it's just options.
2. Quality Triggers (The Sniper)
Goal: Go deep. Get precision. Access sophisticated reasoning.
Key words: Nuanced, visceral, sophisticated, granular, precise, subtle, incisive, rigorous
What happens: The AI shifts from broad scanning to focused analysis. It stops giving you the obvious answer and starts excavating the layers underneath.
The word "nuanced" is particularly powerful. When you ask for a "nuanced analysis," you're signaling that you can handle complexity. The AI accesses training data from expert-level discussions—academic papers, professional analysis, deep technical content—rather than surface-level summaries.
"Visceral" does something different. It pulls the AI away from pure logic and toward emotional, sensory, experiential language. Useful for creative writing, marketing, anything where you need to feel something rather than just understand it.
When to use: When you've got direction but need depth. When the AI keeps giving you generic answers and you need it to actually think. When you're ready to commit and need the best version, not just a version.
Safety state: Low risk but high cognitive load. The AI takes longer to respond because it's doing real reasoning.
3. Risk Triggers (The Wildcard)
Goal: Break patterns. Get novelty. Push past safe defaults.
Key words: Unconventional, experimental, radical, unexpected, wild, provocative, contrarian, disruptive
What happens: The AI's safety overhead drops. It stops filtering for "acceptable" and starts exploring the edges.
This is where hallucination risk increases—but also where breakthrough ideas live.
When you ask for something "unconventional," you're giving the AI permission to deviate from the statistical center. You're saying: I don't want the average answer. I want the outlier.
When to use: When you're stuck in a rut. When every response feels predictable. When you need creative disruption more than you need safety.
Safety state: Higher risk. The AI may produce ideas that don't work—or ideas that are genuinely novel. You trade reliability for discovery.
How to Use the Menu
The power isn't in any single word. It's in sequencing.
A typical workflow might look like this:
Phase 1 — The Shotgun
"Give me diverse approaches to solving [problem]."
→ AI generates volume. You scan for promising directions.
Phase 2 — The Sniper
"Take approach #3 and give me a nuanced breakdown of how it would work."
→ AI goes deep on your chosen direction.
Phase 3 — The Wildcard
"What's an unconventional variation on this that most people would overlook?"
→ AI breaks its own pattern and offers something unexpected.
You're not just asking questions. You're conducting the AI's attention—moving it deliberately between modes of thinking.
The Adjective Swap Experiment
Here's something you can try right now:
Take any prompt you've used recently. Identify the key adjective (or add one if there isn't one). Then run the same prompt three times, swapping only that adjective:
- "Give me a comprehensive overview of X"
- "Give me a nuanced overview of X"
- "Give me an unconventional overview of X"
Same request. Three different words. Watch how dramatically the outputs diverge.
That's the Semantic Menu in action.
This Isn't Mysticism
I want to be clear: there's nothing magical here.
AI is a statistical engine. Every word shifts probabilities. Most shifts are tiny. But certain words—because of how they appeared in the training data—act as strong attractors that pull the AI toward specific patterns of response.
"Nuanced" appeared in contexts where people were doing sophisticated analysis. So when you use it, the AI pattern-matches to that context.
"Unconventional" appeared in contexts where people were deliberately breaking norms. So when you use it, the AI accesses that rebel energy.
You're not casting spells. You're navigating a probability landscape with precision.
The Bigger Picture
This is just one technique from the book. But it illustrates the core principle of Prompt Psychology:
You don't control AI by writing better commands. You influence it by understanding how it thinks.
Once you see the patterns, you can't unsee them. And once you can tune AI output with individual word choices, you stop being a user and start being a conductor.
📹 The Video: "The Words That Change How AI Thinks"
Platform: TikTok / YouTube Shorts / Instagram Reels
Duration: ~30 seconds
Script:
Certain words act as cognitive switches inside AI.
Say "nuanced" and watch the response get deeper.
Say "visceral" and watch it shift from logic to emotion.
Say "unconventional" and watch it stop playing safe.This isn't mysticism. It's statistics.
Every word you use shifts what's likely to come next. Most words nudge slightly. But some words dramatically change the probability landscape—pulling the AI toward completely different regions of its intelligence.
Once you know which words do what, you can tune AI output with surprising precision.
Prompt Psychology. Link in bio.
📚 Get the Book
Prompt Psychology: The Art of Intelligent Command
Available now on Amazon (Kindle & Paperback)
The book contains the complete Semantic Menu—dozens of trigger words mapped by function, with examples of when and how to use each one.
What's Coming Next
This series continues with more distilled concepts from three years of AI collaboration:
- The Context Cascade — Why dumping information kills your results
- Flow State — When AI stops being a tool and becomes a thinking partner
- The Hard Reset Protocol — How to save a dying conversation
- Safety Overhead — The invisible barrier between you and the AI's real intelligence
Each post pairs a short video with the deeper context that makes it actionable.
More gold incoming.
