SOPs the lab will actually follow
Lesson 2 of 6 · Running a group
1 · Learn the move · Examples + few-shot
Every lab has one SOP people actually follow and several nobody has opened since the day they were written. The difference is rarely diligence; it is design, and your own corpus contains the evidence. The few-shot move: paste the followed SOP and an ignored one side by side and have the model extract what separates them - step grain (one action per line versus paragraphs), decision points marked with what-you-should-see, photos where the step is visual, failure notes at the steps that actually fail, length that respects the reader mid-procedure with gloves on. Then every new SOP gets drafted in the followed one's shape. Compliance is a property you design in, not a virtue you request at lab meeting - and the template that works in your lab is discoverable from what your lab already follows.
Here are two of our SOPs: one the lab follows [paste], one nobody opens [paste]. Step 1: extract the design differences - step grain, decision points, visuals, failure notes, length, tone - as a rule list. Step 2: using those rules, draft the new SOP for [procedure] from my notes [paste]. It should read like a sibling of the followed one. Gaps in my notes = [NEEDS: ...].
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
The buffer prep SOP gets followed to the letter; the instrument shutdown SOP gets ignored so reliably that the service contract has paid for itself in avoidable calls. You are writing the SOP for the new plate washer this week, and you would like it to have the first SOP's fate, not the second's.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
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