Promptotyping is an iterative, knowledge-driven method for developing project-specific digital research artefacts from structured research data and maintained project knowledge through Context Engineering and Agentic Engineering, organised around four recurrent forms of work (Preparation, Exploration, Distillation, Implementation). In the canonical repository convention, a knowledge/ folder holds versioned Knowledge Documents for requirements, data, decisions, and domain knowledge. This curated knowledge artefact guides implementation, persists across sessions, and receives consequential findings through write-back. The method also permits another inspectable and revisable documentary environment. A Critical Expert in the Loop verifies LLM output at defined points.
This repository is the public method portal and the repository of the method paper, which is written in research-artefacts/promptotyping-paper.md. The portal at https://dhcraft.org/Promptotyping/ integrates the specification, case evidence, tutorial, templates and canonical skill. It also serves the templates as stable, machine-readable addresses.
The four forms of work move from gathering raw material (Preparation) over probing what the data affords (Exploration) and distilling the findings into selective Markdown documents (Distillation) to iterative, verified development with an agentic coding tool (Implementation). Knowledge Document is the general term for a document of this kind, and it specialises into three types according to the kind of knowledge it holds, each with a diagnostic rule attached. Declarative Documents hold knowledge about the subject matter. Process Documents divide current handoff inputs, accepted future work, and the curated provenance index between handoff.md, plan.md, and journal.md. Action Documents, which the paper calls agent instruction documents, hold knowledge about how to act (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md); check these when output is formally wrong.
An overview of the method is at dhcraft.org/Promptotyping/#overview.
The manuscript is being prepared for journal submission. On 14 October 2026 the author removed the manuscript from the current public repository and website. The method specification, templates and documented applications remain available. Earlier public availability remains part of the publication history; removing the current copy does not establish compliance with a journal's originality requirements.
knowledge/paper-specification.md records the manuscript's governing requirements. Manuscript text is maintained outside this public repository.
Two introductions to the method (German): the methodology explainer Promptotyping, Teil 1 covering the four forms of work, the documents, and Critical Expert in the Loop, and the live demo Teil 2, building a functional dashboard from 76 Excel files with Claude Code.
| Content | Location | On the site |
|---|---|---|
| Paper specification | knowledge/paper-specification.md | Manuscript unavailable |
| Evidence layer of the paper (Grounded Vault) | vault/ | #vault |
| Promptotyping Bench (draft research programme) | Proposal, plan, task and tooling index, research map | No dedicated portal page |
| Knowledge Document templates | _content/promptotyping-document/ | #vorlagen |
| Convention (naming contract, frontmatter schema, structure) | _content/konvention.md | #konvention-v0.1 |
| Technology baseline for static research tools (draft) | _content/technology-baseline.md | — |
| Curated case studies | data/case-studies.json, depth pages in _content/case-studies/ | #use-cases |
| Guided first iteration | _content/tutorial.md | #tutorial |
| Method extensions from practice | _content/praxis.md | #praxis |
| Canonical Promptotyping skill | skills/promptotyping/ | #skills-promptotyping |
| Reusable system prompts (coding, writing) | _content/skills/ | #skills |
| Glossary | data/glossar.json, _content/glossar.md | #glossar |
| Durable site knowledge base (self-application) | knowledge/ | — |
| Live Process Inbox | knowledge/handoff.md | — |
| Source material, including video scripts | source-material/ | — |
| Dated reports and transfer context | snapshots/, handoffs/ | — |
The templates of the catalogue structure the documents of a Promptotyping knowledge base. Each is addressable under a stable latest URL of the pattern https://dhcraft.org/Promptotyping/promptotyping-document/{slug} and readable as raw Markdown under the machine address pattern below. A template applies only when its trigger holds. This method portal records its material basis in knowledge/project.md; benchmark tasks hold their own data contracts and provenance in the separate authoring area.
| Slug | Function | Type |
|---|---|---|
| index | Navigation and glossary of the knowledge base | Declarative |
| project | Charter | Declarative |
| data | Material | Declarative |
| specification | Specification (requirements, decisions) | Declarative |
| user-stories | Specification (narrative scenarios) | Declarative |
| action-layer | Agent instructions (CLAUDE.md) |
Action |
| architecture | Architecture | Declarative |
| technology | Technology baseline for an artefact family | Action |
| domain-knowledge | Domain knowledge and reasoning layer | Declarative |
| design | Design | Declarative |
| testing | Quality assurance | Action |
| verification | Adversarial verification of claims | Declarative |
| journal | Provenance | Process |
| handoff | Process Inbox | Process |
| plan | Planning | Process |
| report | Reporting | Declarative (snapshot) |
| integration | Cross-project contracts | Declarative |
Template versions live in the mirrors' frontmatter and in data/promptotyping-documents.json, which is the catalogue this table follows.
The gallery at #use-cases curates publicly documented projects built with the method; each card links the project's GitHub repository and, where available, live demo and video. The underlying data is data/case-studies.json, and the cases marked there with deep_page carry a depth page under _content/case-studies/.
Repositories that apply the method declare which template a document follows in a template: frontmatter field:
template:
name: Vorlage Datengrundlage
version: <current template version, see data/promptotyping-documents.json>
url: https://dhcraft.org/Promptotyping/promptotyping-document/data
alias: https://dhcraft.org/Promptotyping/#promptotyping-document-dataThe url resolves in a browser via 404.html routing and requires JavaScript. For HTTP retrieval without JavaScript, the canonical machine address is the static Markdown file:
https://dhcraft.org/Promptotyping/_content/promptotyping-document/{slug}.md
.nojekyll in the repository root is required for GitHub Pages to publish _content/. Details in knowledge/specification.md (A4, A5, ADR-10).
The site is both specification and application of the method. The knowledge base in knowledge/ follows the templates the site publishes, each document carrying the template: field that points back to its own specification. The paper's supporting claims are anchored in the Grounded Vault under vault/, which links every claim to a source with provenance.
index.html single-shell entry for the method portal
404.html subpath-to-hash routing fallback
CLAUDE.md action layer of this repository (its own instance of the action-layer template)
.nojekyll required so GitHub Pages publishes _content/
knowledge/ knowledge base of the site itself
research-artefacts/ benchmark proposal and benchmark authoring area
source-material/ cleaned video transcripts
snapshots/ dated reports and audits
handoffs/ exceptional dated transition snapshots
schema/ JSON Schema of the frontmatter core
tools/ consistency check, glossary build, paper review inventory, tests
skills/ canonical Promptotyping skill
_content/ Markdown content (method pages, templates, case studies, glossary)
assets/ CSS, JS, vendored libraries, fonts, logo
data/ JSON data (case studies, glossary, template table, vault index)
vault/ Grounded Vault instance, evidence layer of the paper
No framework, no build step; marked.js and js-yaml are vendored. The reasoning is documented in the technology baseline.
git clone https://github.com/DigitalHumanitiesCraft/Promptotyping.git
cd Promptotyping
python -m http.server 8000Open http://localhost:8000. Development history is in knowledge/journal.md.
This repository documents the Promptotyping method. The journal manuscript is maintained separately.
For the repository and site: Pollin, Christopher; Steiner, Christian: Promptotyping. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14160875 (concept DOI, always resolves to the current version)
The method originates in the author's dissertation and was first published in blog form:
- Pollin, Christopher: Modelling, Operationalising and Exploring Historical Information. Using Historical Financial Sources as an Example. Dissertation, University of Graz 2025. https://unipub.uni-graz.at/obvugrhs/12127700
- Pollin, Christopher: Promptotyping. Von der Idee zur Anwendung. DHCraft Blog, 24.04.2025. https://dhcraft.org/excellence/blog/Promptotyping/
- Pollin, Christopher: Promptotyping. Zwischen Vibe Coding, Vibe Research und Context Engineering. Blogpost, L.I.S.A. Wissenschaftsportal der Gerda Henkel Stiftung, 17.01.2026. https://lisa.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/digitale_geschichte_pollin
Code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the Python tooling under tools/, vault/tools/ and research-artefacts/promptotyping-bench/) is licensed under the MIT License, see LICENSE. Content (Markdown under _content/, knowledge/, the Grounded Vault under vault/, and the prose texts of the site) is licensed under CC BY 4.0. The split follows the carrier; source that runs is MIT, text that is read is CC BY 4.0. This repository contains no third-party research data.