The Feynman Technique Prompt: How to Make AI Explain Anything in 4 Layers of Depth

Short summary

The Feynman Technique, adapted for AI prompting, breaks down complex concepts into four distinct cognitive levels—intuitive, mechanistic, expert, and one-sentence compression. Each level serves a diagnostic purpose, exposing understanding gaps that any single explanation would miss. The article provides a ready-to-use prompt template and worked example using the self-attention mechanism.

• •Four-layer explanation structure tests different cognitive dimensions of a concept
• •Ready-to-use prompt template can be applied immediately to any capable LLM
• •Worked example demonstrates the technique on self-attention mechanism in Transformers

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.