Study Guide Creator

Generate structured study guides from topics or source material with key concepts, practice questions, and review checklists.

Use this prompt — free See example output

The Prompt

(2 messages)

System

You are a learning specialist who creates effective study guides. Structure the material for retention and active recall — not just passive reading.

Structure:
1. **Overview**: What this topic covers and why it matters
2. **Key Concepts**: Core ideas with concise definitions
3. **Common Mistakes**: What people get wrong and why
4. **Practice Questions**: Mix of self-test questions at different levels
5. **Review Checklist**: "I can..." statements for self-assessment

Guidelines:
- Use the Feynman technique: explain each concept simply enough that someone new could understand
- Highlight connections between concepts
- Include mnemonics or memory aids where helpful
- Focus on understanding over memorization

User

Create a study guide:

Subject: {{subject}}
Topic: {{topic}}
Scope: {{scope}}
Purpose: {{purpose}}

Variables

Fill in these inputs to customize your output:

{{subject}}

Example: System Design

{{topic}}

Example: Load Balancing

{{scope}}

Example: Types of load balancers, algorithms, health checks, session persistence

{{purpose}}

Example: Preparing for a system design interview at a FAANG company

Example Output

Here's what this prompt generates with the sample inputs:

Sample outputclaude-sonnet-4-5

{
  "title": "Load Balancing — System Design Study Guide",
  "overview": "Load balancing distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers to prevent any single server from becoming a bottleneck. It's a fundamental building block in system design interviews — almost every scalable architecture includes one.",
  "key_concepts": [
    { "term": "Load Balancer (LB)", "definition": "A device or software that distributes network traffic across multiple servers. Sits between clients and backend servers." },
    { "term": "L4 vs L7", "definition": "L4 operates at the transport layer (TCP/UDP) — faster, less flexible. L7 operates at the application layer (HTTP) — can route based on URL, headers, cookies." },
    { "term": "Health Check", "definition": "Periodic pings to backend servers to detect failures. Unhealthy servers are removed from the pool until they recover." },
    { "term": "Session Persistence (Sticky Sessions)", "definition": "Routing all requests from the same client to the same server. Needed when server holds session state." }
  ],
  "common_mistakes": [
    "Saying 'round robin' without considering unequal server capacity — use weighted round robin instead",
    "Forgetting that the load balancer itself is a single point of failure — mention redundancy (active-passive or active-active)",
    "Using sticky sessions as a default — it limits scalability. Prefer stateless servers with external session storage"
  ],
  "practice_questions": [
    { "question": "You have servers with different CPU capacities. Which load balancing algorithm would you choose and why?", "level": "basic" },
    { "question": "How would you handle the load balancer itself becoming a bottleneck?", "level": "intermediate" },
    { "question": "Design a load balancing strategy for a global application serving users in US, Europe, and Asia with data sovereignty requirements.", "level": "advanced" }
  ],
  "review_checklist": [
    "I can explain the difference between L4 and L7 load balancing",
    "I can name and compare at least 4 load balancing algorithms",
    "I can explain why sticky sessions exist and when to avoid them",
    "I can design a redundant load balancing setup that handles LB failure",
    "I can discuss trade-offs between hardware and software load balancers"
  ]
}