These four prompts cover the parts of a literature review where AI saves the most time without giving up rigor: designing the search strategy from focused research questions, extracting structured findings from a set of papers, synthesizing across sources by theme, and building the gap analysis with prioritized recommendations. Each prompt is meant to be filled in with your own project context and source material, then run in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or any LLM with a long enough context window. The prompts assume a human researcher in the loop — the model produces the bulk pass, the researcher verifies the citations, reads the highest-impact sources in full, and owns the final recommendations.
Prompt 1: Run a focused literature search and extract structured findings
You are an experienced research librarian helping me run a focused literature review for a UX project.
Project context: [product type, user segment, business question]
Research questions: [list 2-4 specific questions the review must answer]
Time window: [e.g., last 5 years for UX, longer for foundational studies]
Source types: [academic papers, industry reports, peer-reviewed only, etc.]
For each research question:
1. Suggest 5-8 search queries (mix of academic phrasing and practitioner phrasing) that would surface the most relevant published evidence. Briefly justify each query.
2. List 3-5 high-credibility databases or sources to search for this specific question (Google Scholar, ACM Digital Library, Nielsen Norman Group, Baymard Institute, etc.).
3. Propose inclusion criteria for screening: what kinds of studies should be included or excluded for this question, and why.
4. Flag any keywords that are likely to surface a high volume of low-relevance noise, with suggestions for narrowing.
Format the output as a structured table with one row per research question and one column per recommended query, source, and inclusion criterion.Prompt 2: Extract structured findings from a set of papers
I will paste a set of paper abstracts (or full-text PDFs if available) below. For each paper, extract a structured row with the following fields:
1. Citation (author, year, title, venue)
2. Research question(s) addressed by this paper
3. Methods used (sample size, study design, qualitative/quantitative/mixed)
4. Key findings, in 2-3 sentences, with direct quotes where possible
5. Limitations or context that might affect applicability to my project
6. Relevance score for my project (High / Medium / Low) and one-sentence justification
7. Implication for my design or research decision (one sentence — "if this finding holds, then...")
My project context: [product type, user segment, decision the review will inform]
Papers to extract:
[paste abstracts or PDFs]
After the table, list:
- Any paper where the abstract did not give enough information to extract reliably (flag for full-text reading)
- Any paper that seems methodologically weak (small sample, single setting, no peer review) and should be downweighted
- Any pattern across the papers that the research questions did not anticipatePrompt 3: Synthesize findings across sources by theme
I have a structured source log from a literature review on [topic] for [project context]. I need to move from a list of source summaries to a synthesis organized by theme. Below is the extracted log.
Source log:
[paste the structured rows from Prompt 2 — citation, finding, relevance, etc.]
Please:
1. Identify 4-7 themes that recur across the sources. For each theme, name it in 2-4 words and write a one-line definition.
2. For each theme, write a one-paragraph synthesis that combines the evidence from multiple sources. Cite the sources in-text. Distinguish convergent findings (multiple sources agree) from contradictions (sources disagree) and from single-source claims.
3. For each theme, assess the strength of the evidence using these levels:
- Strong: 3+ peer-reviewed sources converge with consistent methods
- Moderate: 2-3 sources converge but methods or contexts differ
- Weak: 1-2 sources, single context, or contradictory
4. Flag any theme where the convergent finding contradicts conventional wisdom or stakeholder assumptions, and explain why.
5. Identify any source that consistently appears across multiple themes — it may be a foundational paper worth reading in full.
6. List the themes in order of relevance to my decision, not in order of evidence strength.Prompt 4: Build the gap analysis and recommendations
I have a thematic synthesis of a literature review on [topic] for [project context]. The team needs to decide [specific design or research decision] in the next sprint.
Synthesis (themes with strength of evidence):
[paste the themes from Prompt 3]
Original research questions:
[paste the 2-4 questions from the start of the review]
Please:
1. Gap analysis: For each original research question, state explicitly whether the literature answers it (Strong / Moderate / Weak / Not at all), and what specific aspect of the question is unanswered.
2. List the gaps in priority order based on how much they block the team's decision. The top 2-3 gaps are candidates for primary research.
3. Recommendations: For each theme with Strong or Moderate evidence, draft a concrete recommendation tied to the team's specific decision. Each recommendation should include the finding, the source(s) behind it, the strength of the evidence, and the suggested action.
4. Identify any recommendation that contradicts the team's likely instinct or stakeholder assumptions, and frame it carefully (acknowledge the contradiction, present the evidence, suggest a small validation step).
5. Identify any decision where the literature is too thin to support a recommendation, and propose the smallest primary study that would close the gap.
6. Draft a 5-sentence executive summary the lead can use as the opening of the readout brief, anchored on the headline finding and the top recommendation.